Fear and Loathing in the 1970s
by ElectraSev5n
Summary: Prologue fixed. Time travel, Hermione centric. Fleur, Viktor, Hermione and Harry end up attempting an experimental spell, intended to take them back just far enough to win their war. They come to consciousness dazed, confused, and separated decades earlier than they intended. Gross incompetence and hissy fits abound. Marauder Era. NOT Harry/Hermione. Warnings for strong language.
1. A Prologue of General Incompetence

Edited 6/5/2013. I still think the prologue is unsatisfying, but now it answers more questions than it did before. Most of the story will not be Fleur's perspective, but she needs to be the one who tells this part because Hermione doesn't have the awareness of her own motivations to assess herself in the way Fleur can.

Fleur fidgeted unhappily, fussing with the sleeve of her rather old fashioned top. Victor and Harry were sullenly quiet, but Hermione was animated and clearly excited. She was the one who had adapted the ritual they were planning to use to hop back to before the war was unwinnable, after all.

Fleur sniffed, disliking both the cold and the plan. Hermione was brilliant, yes, but Fleur had serious reservations about using a ritual meant to take three people sideways and back one week's time to transport four people sideways and backwards almost a year. Dimension theory was spotty at best, but Merlin only knows a million things could go wrong. Hermione was certain that they would re-enter the same timeline that they had left, but Fleur didn't like the plan. They could end up in a dimension where Krum's parents had been crab fishermen and Harry was a fashion designer for all they knew about how universes interacted, and that was making the enormous assumption that one of them didn't end up left behind.

What would happen to them if they ended up someplace where they had not born or had died already? The spellcraft was designed to allow the users to merge back into their bodies after meditation, and there was no basis to even begin to theorize what would happen if they didn't have bodies to go back to. Even if they did, if Hermione was wrong about this they would essentially be killing their alternate selves in order to assume their lives. But they were young, desperate, and forced into a role of leadership and scrutiny. After all, the twiwizard champions and the brightest witch of generations were a symbol for the fading resistance forces.

Hermione and Harry themselves didn't say it, but Fleur thought they were eager to go back far enough to prevent the ghastly muggle bombing of Diagon Alley that had claimed nearly the entire Weasley family as casualties. They'd grieved, of course, but going back and saving them would be infinitely better than closure. The loss had hit Harry hard, of course, but the way Hermione reacted was almost shocking. The two of them had been functionally useless for months, and although the thought made Fleur feel guilty, she wondered if things would have been much better if they had sucked it up faster.

They were so close, too- they'd found and destroyed all but two horcruxes. They just couldn't find the last two- they counted the ring, diary, Nagini, cup, Voldemort himself (who hadn't been destroyed, but could be counted on to die after the rest were gone), but they had no idea what the other two objects could be. Maybe the clues they'd needed to figure it out had been destroyed when the wizarding world fell apart. Voldemort himself had essentially dropped off of the map after Hogwarts had been destroyed, but at that point they had bigger problems to worry about.

The plan made her feel sick, but she knew that if they didn't act, no one would. Most of the surviving hold-outs were in muggle custody, hiding, or were likely to flee for one of the pockets of resistance that seemed to be doing better than most. It made Fleur feel ill. This is certainly not a plan that the general public would condone, but then again- it was being done for their sakes, and if it worked they would never know about it. If it didn't work, then the figureheads of a dying culture would be lost and assimilation and destruction were all but assured. Of course, without a drastic plan, they were lost anyways.

Magical England was ironically experiencing what Fleur could only see as modern day colonialism- after the Ministry fell, hostile and foreign governments from North and South American swept in with the intent to claim property and deal with the multifaceted conflict between the natives- magical Britain, muggle Britain and Death Eaters- in whatever way they saw fit. Magical Europe was in tatters, trying to repel the terrorist riots that now plagued the main continent.

The plan was relatively simple. Things had only gone to hell when the Muggles had figured out Voldemort and his merry band of morons were behind all the murders and disappearances. The solution would be to prevent them from learning about the wizarding world by preventing the murders- also known as squashing Mr. Riddle like the foul cockroach he was. (Hermione had mumbled something vague about trapping him in a glass jar for a year, but Fleur didn't get why that was so funny. He had to be killed, not locked up.) Britain's government would need a serious overhaul afterwards, but Hermione and Harry had the influence to make it happen and Fleur could slink back to France with no Parisians the wiser.

When urged, Fleur took her spot at the top of the triangle, with Victor to her right and Harry and Hermione together to her left. Ideally, they would merge back into their bodies and end up wherever their families had been at the time once this was over. They had a brief plan of action-they knew that they needed to eliminate Voldemort's horcruxes and prevent him from utilizing the same ancient magical hotspots he'd used before- but there wasn't much sense in planning before they knew the details of their situation.

Spidery cracks trickled and jumped aggressively across the cement floor they sat on while Hermione cast spell after spell and the others quietly held their meditative poses. The dust tried to rise, but could only swish about a foot off the ground, caught up in the heavy magic Hermione was manipulating and pulling from the ley line below. Fleur fought the urge to turn when she heard a gravelly rumble behind her- she could only assume that the dust was piling and rising into a short pillar behind her the way it was behind the other two points. Her heart was pounding furiously and her throat seemed to be closing off- something intangible but powerful seemed to be exerting pressure on the small group. Wildly, Fleur thought that she was dying- she could feel herself slowly being compressed and altered and the blood within her veins was uncomfortably hot.

Was this it? It could be paranoia, but Fleur was certain there was an air of wrongness. Hermione had been incorrect, overconfident in her abilities. This ritual was going to kill them all, or worse. She stopped breathing and forced herself into stillness, imposing her will upon her disobedient body. She WOULD be calm. It was hard to remain calm when she could feel herself… not decomposing exactly, but losing what she was composed of and becoming an intransigent shadow of a human being. Her companions looked about as comfortable and distressed as she felt. Electricity was racing across her brain, making her hyperaware of her own being and tiny flashes of light that she couldn't entirely focus on and the darkness of the night sky was mutating and everything seemed to be tinted with red, like looking through your eyelid into the sun and then, nothing.


	2. Well, That Didn't Work As Intended

This is the first real chapter. I own nothing except a small herd of cats. I won't be repeating that every chapter, so let's just clear up my lack of ownership right now.

Victor Krum came into existence in a small farming town in Eastern Bulgaria. His transition wasn't particularly confusing- he knew that he was nine years old and that he was twenty four years old and that he was now his father's twin brother. This, quite frankly, made him giggle a little bit and despair. His grandparents hadn't had a lot of money, and he knew that they had barely sent his father to Durmstrang. He was going to have to figure something out, and fast, whether that be seeking out financial assistance or saving money to put towards tuition. Or hell… he could take his level five tests before his letter came, and then request to be placed in upper levels, graduate quickly, and work to get caught up on current events and meet with his cohorts.

Of course, that depended on whether it would be most beneficial to fade into the background or to excel and take a role of leadership. He needed to contact the other three and make some sort of plan. He rather glumly reflected that this could be rather difficult, seeing as how he didn't know what identity they had assumed and he didn't think any letter addressed to "The person who used to be Fleur Delacour, France" or "the wizard formerly known as Harry Potter, England" was likely to reach who he wanted it to.

Fleur woke up in lavender silk sheets under a canopy bed that glittered with real diamonds, and took a minute to wonder why she remembered pushing a small Veela girl who looked remarkably like her mother into the swan fountain and getting sent to bed angry. Then she remembered that she was now a six year old named Camillia, and had upgraded from a quarter Veela to one-half Veela. She rolled her eyes and flopped back down onto the bed.

What the hell was she going to do to entertain herself at school, much less for the next thirteen years while she waited to become an adult again? Well. Besides tormenting her tutors and attempting to read everything she hadn't been interested in the first time around, rather.

She flounced out of bed and over to her miniature writing desk, extracting a bottle of pink ink and quill with a long, curly white feather. Hermione had some explanations to make, and seeing as how she about nineteen years younger than she had expected to be, she needed to know what the hell their new plan of action was. She was relatively certain that the Horcrux hunt was going to be postponed, on account of how she was currently age and height-impaired.

Fleur frowned, doodling on her parchment. She wasn't sure how to contact the others. Even if she could sneak an owl out without her parents noticing, she had no way of knowing if the owl would know her friends by their past names. She sighed, putting a hat on the pink doggie she'd sketched. Well, hell. She flipped the parchment over, intending to make a list of her new priorities and questions. Under number one she wrote a note about figuring out how to contact the others. She underlined it, and made a swoopy two. Fleur had zero intention of suffering through years of tutoring in subjects she had already mastered. She would have to go to Beaubatons eventually, but that didn't mean that her per-school education had to be worthless. She listed things she would actually like to learn-languages, runework, and spell theory. Perhaps she could pick up a musical instrument or a sport? Her parents would be shocked and confused to see that their tiny child tested out of all sorts of things she did not know yet, but they would believe a muttered explanation about reading frequently. After all, who jumps to the conclusion that their child has done something unnatural or illegal when they perform far above average academically? No one, that's who. They would think they had a little prodigy on their hands.

Hermione woke up, heart pounding and disoriented. The purple walls she saw weren't right- her bedroom had been green and lined with bookshelves. She frowned. No, that made no sense. When she had finally moved into Dudley's second bedroom, she had not been allowed to repaint. The walls were still white.

Wait.

She did remember these walls. She had just celebrated her seventh birthday a few weeks prior with her sisters.

But she didn't have sisters. She didn't have any siblings- her parents had died so young.

Well, after her Obliviated parents moved to Australia they had adopted a son, but Hermione had never met him.

Hermione forced her racing brain to calm down. Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong with the ritual. She had three different sets of memories, two of which extended far past her seventh birthday. And in one of them…

Oh my god. In one of those memories, Hermione was a man. Named Harry.

"Shit, motherfucking stupid motherfucking tri-toed lawyer of a Paraguayan sloth. I think I ate Harry's existence. Or Harry ate Hermione's. Or we both mutually destroyed some kid." She scrambled out of bed, throwing the restricting blankets to the ground in frustration and haste. The room was both foreign and familiar, and she instantly knew where to go to find the small bathroom she shared with her twin. Her knees hurt as she practically leapt up onto the counter to examine herself in the small mirror above the sink.

Two of the three memories agreed that her bright green eyes were right, but only one consciousness was prepared to see childishly chubby cheeks, a pointed chin, and thick, doll-like eyelashes over that ridiculously messy hair. It was a sleeker texture than she remembered from the last time she had been a woman, but it was just as thick and the uncontrollable waves she remembered were now uncontrollable curls going every-which-way. With a groan, the pajama-clad child rested her forehead on the glass, reaching down after a moment to shut off the tap that she had smacked rather hard with her leg in her haste. It figures that she would splice herself with the only person in the world with worse hair than she had. She wasn't entirely sure whose opinion that was, but arguably either Harry or Hermione had a good point. Their hair was terrible. The future apparently held a lot of de-frizzing spray and sleekening serums.

The child sighed. Perhaps her revisions weren't quite as thoroughly researched as she thought they were. She silently resolved to spend a lot more time on Arithmancy this time around.

"Iris! You're taking forever in there. You had your shower before bed, I need to take mine now or I'm gonna be late!" Green eyes watched the shocked look travel over the face in the mirror that was apparently hers now. She… knew that voice. Not just from this lifetime. That was Lily Potter on the other side of the door. Well. Lily Evans now. She was… Lily Evans' sister? Twin sister, actually. That… made some sense, actually. If she went back too far to merge with her own body, she had to fit into this universe somehow, and it almost made sense that she would end up connected to her closest blood relations. Except she also had the Grangers- of course, if she were that mother's sister, then she might not be magical this time around.

She resolved to stop thinking things like that post haste. It made her seven year-old brain hurt.

Hermione and Harry were gone. It was way too much to try to reconcile three identities. She was Iris now, and she was going to work to avoid thinking of herself as three people. The information she had from Harry and Hermione's lives were not exactly her memories. It was more like… information that she had come across in a book. Those were someone else's lives, and just happened to have a lot of practical application to what she was going to do in the next twenty years.

She splashed water on her face and used the towel to turn off the faucet. Then she took a deep breath, and opened the door to see her twin sister for the very first time. Lily promptly pushed past Iris, slung her clothes on the counter, and stepped into the tub, closing the shower curtain with unnecessary force and irritation. Iris blinked. Then decided it was time to leave when an oversized t-shirt sailed over the top of the curtain and landed on the floor.

School was horrible. Completely and utterly intolerable, there was nothing redeemable about it whatsoever and Iris was going to blow it sky-high if they tried to make her go back tomorrow. Primary school had been boring enough the first time through. But now, as a full-grown adult with a genius intellect, it was positively torture. In fact, she resolved to devise a curse that mimicked the mind-numbing and rage-inducing effects of spending eight hours being forced to read stories about foxes jumping over boxes and adding numbers with decimal points. She was going to call it something really cool, and it would eventually get banned and become one of the Unforgivables and she would go down in history as one of very few muggleborn dark ladies, and they would build a temple to her in Turkey.

But for now, she angrily sucked her apple juice through a straw and smashed the paper box into the table with her fist. Her mother and father exchanged a concerned look over her head, while Lily and Petunia obliviously ate their own after-school snacks. Petunia snatched Lily's last cookie and jammed it in her mouth and then took off at a run, hotly pursued. Iris found it hard to be amused.

"What's wrong, honey?" Mr. Evans asked, leaning over to smooth down her hair. "You've been in a bad mood since we picked you up. Did something happen at school today that upset you?"

Iris glared at the table and darkly intoned "I am unamused. School is boring. I already know what the teacher is talking about and it just makes me so mad to have to sit there and listen to things I already know for hours and hours. I'm pretty sure it was about exactly one million billion hours long, and what I learned is that my white-hot hatred is still not hot enough to light Mrs. Partridge's desk aflame. I was really hoping for the mental stimulation walking down the corridor to avoid burning alive would provide after the irritant of enduring her prattle for a millennia of suffering. And sadness. And lunch was gross chili."

That was about the time Iris realized that Hermione's vocabulary and skills at emotional expression and Harry's temper had made a rather nice combination. Also, that adults in the sixties didn't particularly appreciate small children wishing fiery death upon their sweet, elderly teachers.

A few weeks later, Iris had completed testing that would hopefully get her skipped up a couple of grades. Lily was more than a little jealous, but she would get over it with some time. Iris was hoping to actually get her degree before she had to go to Hogwarts- not only would that set a precedent for her as a prodigy and provide an explanation for knowing things at a level she shouldn't have been exposed to yet, but Hermione always regretted not graduating high school at least. She had three and a half years to make that happen.

The only issue was that Iris's parents were a little concerned about her emotional readiness to pass into the level she would actually test into- high school. Iris had tried her level best to convince them that she would still keep her friends in her own age group. Petunia, surprisingly enough, was very supportive. She was in her first year of high school, and very studious.

The part of Iris that remembered Petunia from the future wasn't sure how this bright young girl had ended up the shrill, irrational, neighbor-stalking harridan that Harry Potter knew. Regardless, Iris was hoping to encourage Petunia to focus on academics (and stay the hell away from Vernon Dursley). She was relatively certain that a background in history, ethics, or philosophy would provide Petunia with the tools to cope more amicably with her sister's magical talents. To be fair to Petunia, she really did get genetically screwed. She didn't get magic or Lily's intense, exotic good looks. But she did get a sharp wit, and hopefully that could be capitalized on. To that end, Iris was spending a lot more time with her elder sister and encouraging her to read books about human nature and morality. If nothing else, Iris was hoping to save her sister from a lifetime of acting the dutiful housewife to a man with half her IQ. No wonder her brain was roughly as functional as a bag of cats by the time Harry was eleven.

On a warm Saturday, Petunia took Iris and Lily to the park a few blocks away from their house. Petunia laid down on her tummy and doodled in a notebook while Lily made a break for the swings. Iris looked around, noting that the park wasn't in the nicest area of town. A couple of tiny, dingy houses lined the north area of the park, but there was only one house on the east side of the block. It was much larger than the surrounding houses, but in terrible condition, with a messy lawn and dirty windows. Iris swore that she could see a small figure sitting at an upstairs window, looking in their direction.

"Come on Iris, I bet I can swing much higher than you!" Lily called from the playset.

Iris dutifully followed, sitting and idly rocking her legs. Lily was much more enthusiastic, rocketing up almost to the height of the bar. Petunia looked up from her sketch of what appeared to be a cat in tuxedo riding a horse and grimaced. "Lily, stop that. You could get hurt. What if you fell?"

Lily pouted. "I would not get hurt. Here, watch!" With that, she kicked once more and wiggled out of her seat at the apex of her flight, sailing off the seat and into the air. Petunia inhaled sharply and scrambled to her feet, but stopped dead when instead of falling with a "Crack!", Lily floated down slowly a la Mary Poppins, minus the umbrella. Lily giggled and pretended to be holding an umbrella, slowly turning as she landed gently and then bounced up and down on her heels. "See!" she exclaimed. "I'm fine. I always land on my feet". She giggled. "I'm like a cat!" She made her hands into claws and swiped at Iris, growling theatrically. With a smile, Iris chose to play along and shrieked dramatically, sprinting away and hiding behind Petunia. "Save me!" Petunia stood still instead of playing along. "What just happened, Lily? That didn't make any sense." She was clearly upset. "I was so worried, I thought that you were going to break your fool neck and you didn't but that didn't make any sense."

Iris stuck her lower lip out and hugged Petunia from behind. "It's ok, Petunia". She mumbled. "Lily didn't mean to frighten you. She was just really happy. Sometimes when we're really happy or really sad, weird things like that happen. She knew she wasn't going to get hurt, but she shouldn't have scared you like that. It was mean."

Lily looked a little ashamed. "I'm sorry, Petunia. It was wrong to show off. I'll listen next time." A door slammed shut in the background. Startled, Iris turned to face the sound. The figure at the window was gone, but she could see a small figure running in the least graceful way she'd ever seen across the grass towards them. "We're about to have company," she nodded her head towards the interloper. Petunia frowned. "I think we should go home and talk about this. Come on, girls." With that, she turned around and started for home.

"Wait up! I want to talk to you for a second!" a boy's voice called out, breathing hard. The interloper was a little shorter than Iris and Lily, dressed in ridiculously oversized and dirty women's clothing. Pity and shock warred in Iris' chest. This was Snape. It was hard to reconcile the sneering, dignified adult with the anxious and self-conscious little boy who was fiddling with the hemline of his blouse in front of her. Iris turned to Petunia. "Wait up a second, I want to talk to him." With that, Lily grabbed him by the hand and marched over to the playset, imperiously indicating that he should sit.

"You're a witch", he announced with a beatific grin as though her were declaring her the lotto winner. Dead silence followed his statement. Lily frowned. "Well, that's just rude. And no I am not!" She flounced away and half walked, half ran towards the house. Iris bit her lip as she saw Lily take Petunia's hand. "Wait-" Snape started anxiously. "I didn't mean…" Iris grabbed his hand. "It's ok, I know what you meant. She doesn't know yet. Her best theory so far is that she has superpowers is going to grow up to be a combination of Wonderwoman and Catwoman".

Snape seemed more disturbed and confused than relieved. Figures, she thought. No good deed goes unpunished. This is going to be a horrible childhood if even SNAPE thinks I'm weird.

"So, um, you knew that you were witches? I thought your family was Muggle".

Iris faked confusion. "Well, magic was as good a word as any for what we can do, but I can't say we ever used the word witches. It's got rather unsavory connotations. Makes me think of hunch-backed old ladies trying to cook with toad eyes or whatever."

He earnestly butted in with a "No, no, that's not what a witch is at all! Well, she can be, but usually it's not. A witch is just any girl who does magic, as opposed to a wizard." He straightened up a little. "I'm a wizard. Usually magic is a family thing- my mother is a witch from the Prince family. But your family isn't magical, right? That means you are muggleborn, which is really rare. I've never heard of muggleborn twins, that's really interesting. How old are you?"

It took quite a bit more thought than it probably should have to answer "Lily and I are seven now. I'm Iris Evans, by the way. And yes, I know that it sounds silly. My older sister is Petunia. I don't think that she has any magic".

The boy blushed. "I don't think it sounds silly. I'm Severus. I should have introduced myself earlier. I'm seven too! Or at least, I will be soon. We'll be in the same class, I bet. And I don't think Petunia is magic, either. If she were, she'd already be in school. Magic school, I mean. She's probably already in muggle school."

Iris looked in the direction of her house. Petunia and Lily were almost out of sight by now, clearly lingering at the border of the park and considering leaving without her. "I think I need to go, my parents don't like me out alone. They seem half convinced that I'm going to get dragged away by a pack of wolves if I go outside without adult supervision." His face fell. She added "Why don't we meet here tomorrow? I'll straighten things out with Lily, and we can have a picnic lunch here and discuss how mutually awesome we are and how we will one day rule the world with an iron fist and smite all who stand before us." Impulsively, Iris grabbed the small boy in a hug. "See you tomorrow, Severus! It was nice to meet you."

As she caught up with her new sisters and trotted home, Iris's mind wandered back to the little boy she had just met. She had a hard time reconciling this socially awkward, clearly underloved child with the bitter and cold adult Harry and Hermione had suffered under. Pity swelled in her heart. It was hard to think of this sweet boy turning into such a caustic asshole.

Iris resolved to make friends with him. Of course, she'd have to give him an awesome nickname, because she wasn't sure she had the emotional strength to be friends with someone with such a hideously dorky name. Sentences like, 'hey Severus, let's go disco' or 'Pass me the cake, Severus' just didn't roll off the tongue. Shitty names like Severus and Walburga were probably the cause for like, fifty percent of all choices to join the forces of evil and drink cat blood and stuff. What the hell else can you do with your life after you've been saddled with a name like that? Names are important, and say a lot about what your parents want from you and try to teach you. For example, Iris's parents apparently wanted the world's worst garden. The Blacks wanted stars. The Prince's must want emotionally crippled little weirdoes. Each to their own.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Iris worked to smooth things over between Lily and Severus, and to explain magic to Petunia as gently as possible. Iris was working with the theory that the more Petunia understood (and the less things were dropped on her in a 'your sister is a witch and leaving you forever' way, the more likely that Petunia would …well, not freak out. Lily and Severus were a rather different problem. Lily had gotten over the initial misunderstanding, but she was having a hard time wanting to interact with someone who was so obviously different.

Lily was a sweet child, but she was still a child, and a privileged one. She couldn't even begin to understand poverty or living with a parent who didn't love you. Severus dressed strangely because it was his only option and had poor hygiene because no one had ever taught him otherwise. Iris was a little surprised to find out that Severus had never attended school with other children, but it explained rather a lot. Lily was warming up to him painfully slowly, but probably a lot faster than she would have without Iris's coaxing. Severus didn't seem to notice the awkwardness. Iris guessed that this was probably the happiest he'd ever been.

Iris was actually more concerned with tracking down Fleur and Victor and figuring out what went wrong and what they were going to do. The original plan had been along the lines of hunting down the horcruxes early before Voldemort knew what was going on, and then smashing him with a big rock when he was mortal again and partying for days. It's possible that they could do just that, except they'd have no way of knowing if everything was where it was in the late nineties. Or how many horcruxes there are. Actually, it was necessary to wonder if Iris was now the chosen one, gifted with the honor and privilege of being the one who could smash Voldemort with a big rock. (Fleur had been insistently hopeful that large rocks were the power that the Dark Lord knows not).

Iris was hopeful that her situation reflected hers. It made sense-in the absence of their own body to fall into, they were instead merged into the family of the person who they genetically resembled most. In other words, Fleur and Victor were probably with their parent of the same sex. Hopefully melding two minds together was less painful and confusing than three. Victor should be relatively easy to track down, but Iris didn't know Fleur's mother's maiden name. Still, there couldn't be that many half Veela twin sisters in France.


	3. Nerds in Suburbia

Iris crept out of the silent house, taking care to edge quietly around the furniture. She wasn't particularly familiar with the layout of the house, but she knew enough to not make a gigantic ass of herself by ruining her sneaky late night exit. She took care to leave the back door slightly open-it locked automatically and she didn't have a key. Then she took off at a run for the park, taking a roundabout route. Her calf muscles burnt before she had gotten three blocks, and her pace slowed to what she optimistically labeled a 'jog'.

Iris had to walk the last block, heading to a secluded area in the park. With a sigh, she flopped down on the grass and stretched her muscles, working to the point of discomfort. She eventually settled into a comfortable seated position. She was hoping to see what sort of control she had over her magic. Her theory was that her development should actually be somewhat closer to what she had as an adult than what a normal child would have, especially since she hadn't been having any incidents of accidental magic. If her hypothesis was wrong, then she needed to work up her control anyways. Magic was much like musculature- how impressive it is depends on how early one starts training and fine-tuning it. Of course, not everyone starts out with the same potential. Hermione had never had Harry's raw power, but she had possessed control that made up the difference. Ideally, Iris would be able to combine the positive traits of the people she was made from. In a worst case scenario, she was starting from scratch.

Iris dug her bare toes into the cool dirt and breathed deeply, closing her eyes and visualizing an orange light glowing in between her hands. It may have been optimism, but she thought that her hands felt a little bit warmer. She willed as hard as she could- she wanted something like her bluebell flames, but less hot. She pictured how it moved, how it heated her skin, and the way that it scented the air. Then she opened her eyes, and gave a little sideways smile. She closed her palm and turned her hand inward, extinguishing the little fire. Then she opened her hand and forced it back into existence, persuading it to grow and shrink, then run through a rainbow of colors. She settled it on a vivid pink. She put her palms together, killing it and laid back on the ground, content.

That seemed to support her theory about retaining Hermione's control. She'd also used a respectable amount of power and didn't feel drained or hungry at all. She was definitely packing more of a punch than a seven year old had any right to. Assuming that her magical growth would continue to grow in the patterns that children could usually expect, she was going to end up quite a bit more powerful than Harry or Hermione had managed. To be fair, neither of them had managed to get to the end of their magical growth spurt, but still.

Iris rolled over onto her tummy and attempted to do a series of pushups. That test was less encouraging. Iris could barely manage a 'cheater' push up with her knees on the ground. She huffed, displeased. Her body was hopelessly weak. Both Hermione and Harry had used physical dueling styles, relying on speed and agility. But right now, Iris wasn't even on track to be able to carry her books up to Gryffindor tower.

This was going to be a problem. Sneaking out late at night to exercise wasn't a long-term solution. Her parents were bound to catch her, and she would eventually be too tired to go about her days normally. But most nice suburban parents didn't let little girls go out for long runs and to lift weights unsupervised. That pretty much left organized sports or exercise. The Evanses were, to be frank, irritatingly traditional from Iris's modernized perspective. Her stay-at-home mother mostly engaged in childcare, cooking and occasionally volunteered at a local museum. Her parents were definitely pro-education for girls, but not necessarily in science or dirty, dangerous sports. They encouraged Petunia to read classics and to write, but they were fantastically unconcerned by her failing math grades. They didn't seem likely to let their little princess join boxing or karate. But… they might let Iris take dance classes. Dance would certainly build lean muscle, agility and footwork. Actually, ballet might be a perfect precursor to dueling. Her first thought had been a contact sport, but that wasn't really necessary for dueling. Witches fought by sending and dodging spells, not by punching opponents in the face. That didn't necessarily mean that she had no plans to punch people in the face-she could think of a couple worthy recipients offhand-but it did mean that face-punching was downgraded in her priorities.

Iris cracked a smile. Well, that was a plan. Now all she had to do was convince her parents. That might be easier if Lily was on her side. It would probably be good for Lily as well- Iris planned to be a certifiable B.A.M.F., but that didn't mean that she would be able to take care of Lily all the time. They were scheduled to end up in a war about a year before they graduated, after all. If Lily had been determined to do her part the first time around, she would probably be the same this time. There were really only two ways of trying to deal with that- trying to keep Lily away from the conflict, or trying to give her the means to protect herself and others. Iris was going to bet that the first strategy was going to fail. Besides, if she tried that and didn't succeed, Lily would be worse off than if she'd done nothing.

When she woke up, it was almost ten am. Petunia was over at a friend's house, and Lily was watching cartoons in the front room. Iris grinned and began her recruitment campaign. It only took about five minutes for Lily to realize that she had always sheltered a burning desire to be a ballerina. With a silly grin, Iris rose on her toes and lifted her arms above her head, trying to look graceful. Her twin mimicked her, but wiggled her arms in imitation of a swan. The move might have looked better if Lily hadn't been simultaneously trying to turn. "Come on!" Iris urged. "Let's go show mum".

Azalea Evans was in the parlour reading when they came swirling in what was likely the most awkward dance she'd ever seen. Iris grinned, knowing that they must look ridiculous. There was something really fun about being an obnoxious kid with full awareness of just how tacky and ridiculous you were being. Lily was completely serious, stumbling around and spinning wildly in front of their mother. Iris tried her best to look as though she were as into the dancing as her sister was, just waiting for her to speak.

"Wow, girls! That's beautiful", Azalea choked out, clearly trying not to smile.

"We are ballerinas", Lily announced imperiously. "I'm the Swan Lake!"

"I see that", came the reply. "You are a beautiful swan, sweetheart. And Iris, are you a swan too?" Iris pranced closer to her mother, plopping down in her lap and snuggling into her chest. "I'm just a ballerina princess, mom", she managed. Unable to keep a straight face, Iris hid her face in Azalea's blouse, breathing in her flowery perfume. "Can we be real ballerinas? I want to learn how to dance."

"Me too!", Lily chimed in. "Then we can join the ballet in Paris and dance every night and we're gonna wear soooo much glitter. It'll be so cool! Please, oh please oh please mom. I bet I'll be really good at it! We'll practice all the time, you'll see. Can we?"

Azalea looked a bit gobsmacked. "But darlings, you're going to be busy playing the piano, like grandma. Ballet takes an awful lot of time. Don't you want to be like grandma?"

"I don't want to play the piano. Piano players don't get to wear tutus and dance. They just read music. That's no fun, mum." Lily earnestly pouted. Iris pulled back from her mum's chest and nodded along.

With a sigh, Azalea ruffled Iris's hair and pulled her into a one-armed hug, holding her other arm out to Lily. She held them both close when Lily rushed in, kissing both of their foreheads. "Let me think about it, okay loves? I'll talk to your father about it when he gets home tonight." She patted Lily's back, and continued "But for now, my princesses; you should just go have fun. Why don't you go play in the backyard sandbox?"

Iris saw the opportunity for what it was and interjected- "mum, can we go to the park? Severus lives by the park!"  
Azalea drew back and looked into her eyes. "Severus, honey? Who is that? One of your friends from school?"  
Iris shook her head. "His family doesn't let him go to school. Well, his dad. I think he doesn't have a mum. If he had a mum, he'd know to brush his hair and she'd fix his clothes. His daddy isn't very nice to him, so he spends a lot of time outside. He likes to play tag with us when we go to the park, and he likes the swings. He goes almost as high as Lily does!"

Lily shot her a curious look, clearly wondering where this information had come from. Severus had certainly never said anything like this (although Azalea wouldn't know that). But it was rather obvious to anyone with an adult perspective that Severus never mentioned his mother in the present tense, and that he resented and feared his father. Even Lily could see that Severus was dirty and unkempt, and that his clothes were torn and far too large for his skinny frame. From the way that the outside of his house looked, Iris was willing to bet that the inside would not meet requirements for a child's home. Hermione had never liked Professor Snape, but Iris was rather fond of the earnest little boy who was desperate for approval and companionship. Even if she hadn't been fond of him… well. He had grown up to be a brilliant man. He would make a good ally. Iris was half-considering getting him removed from his (obviously unsuitable) home and into hers, whether through official means or through unofficial channels.

Their mother looked a bit stricken. Iris didn't want to make her mum think of unpleasant things, but she needed Azalea's support. Severus certainly needed a maternal influence, and her mother was more than maternal enough for four children. "Sweetheart, why don't we walk over to his house? I'd like to meet your friend, and we can all come back here and make lunch."

Lily grabbed Iris's hand and tugged towards the hall with a smile. "Let's get our shoes, then. C'mon Iris, you're so slow. Mum, can you make the playdough for us? Severus said he's never played with it, not even the bought stuff."

Azalea smiled. "Sweetheart, I will make you playdough in so many colors. I'll even put the glitter in it." She paused, but by then both girls were out of sight. "Don't forget your coats!" She called up the stairs as little feet thumped away.

Their mother fell in love with Severus, as they'd known she would. He was equally enchanted, easy to please and eager to make her happy. He dug in to the playdough, doing his level best to help Lily make the world's best castle. Iris was a big fan of the purple north tower, but she had ended up designing the green mountain that it sat on, complete with a moat guarded by gummy bear platoons. She was, quite frankly, a little amazed at how such a mistreated child ended up so sweet. Granted, he was quite young, and was obviously desperate for approval.

Their father was a bit surprised to see him at dinner, but gamely waited until after Petunia and the twins had left to walk him home to inquire about the strange little boy. As Lily bullied Severus into holding her hand and skipping, singing the wizard of Oz song, Iris snuggled into Petunia's side happily. She thought she knew the content of the discussion her parents would be having right now. Her mother would be telling Roger about how thin and dirty the boy was, and about Iris's 'innocent' mention of his father's mistreatment and mother's death. Her mother had been concerned and more than a little bit angry when Severus's father hadn't even asked when the child would be back. Azalea had certainly been unimpressed by the fact that he was already drinking at eleven thirty in the morning when they had stopped by to pick Severus up.

Petunia frowned at the house when they arrived, not having seen it up close before. She wrinkled her nose at the overgrown yard, fallen shingles, and filthy windows as if it smelled. "This is where you live, Severus?" she asked. He looked a little embarrassed and shifted awkwardly when he quietly answered in the affirmative. Petunia looked a little appalled. "It's not your fault, Severus. What does your mother do all day? Is your father going to fix this up? It needs a lot of work." Severus jerked his hand away from Lily and all but ran into the house, slamming the door behind him without answering.

"Well! That was rude." Petunia huffed. "Honestly. He knows that his parents should have taken care of this." Lily frowned at her. "You were rude too, Tunia! He doesn't have a mum. You made him sad. He has a dad, but all he does is drink and yell. He doesn't help around the house. I don't think he has anyone to show him how to do stuff and to clean up and make playdough." Petunia bit her lip, looking a bit ashamed. "Well, I didn't know that! I did say that it wasn't his fault."

Iris moved between the two, and urged them to start walking back home. "Petunia didn't mean it, Lily. I wish Severus had a mum and a good dad like us." She innocently added, "Maybe he can come live with us! We have an extra room, and he likes the same games." She kicked a rock down the sidewalk and watched it roll and clatter.

Petunia sighed. "Maybe, Iris. Someone should do something. A kid shouldn't live like that." Iris artfully refrained from pointing out that Petunia wasn't really that much older than he was. It wouldn't help anything.


	4. The Ministry of Magic

Things start to pick up plot-wise from here on out. It gets a little dark.

Iris laid awake at night, squeezing her eyes shut as hard as she could in hopes of shutting out the errant thoughts and emotions. She felt conflicted and sick. It was getting harder to cope with her sense of split personality. It was worst at night, when all that she could hear was Lily's soft breathing and there was nothing to distract her from the sense of utter wrongness in her head. Her initial way of coping with her situation was to deny that there was one at all- trying to pretend that her memories of life as two different, traumatized adults were something that she could be removed from. Iris was starting to feel that this wasn't the case. True, thoughts that Iris identified as belonging to Harry's personality had been fading. He mostly lingered in the way that his strong emotions flavored her perceptions, especially in the way that Iris felt irrational admiration and devotion for Lily beyond what a sister would normally. Iris felt more like Hermione than anything-but cynical and angry in a way that Hermione had never been in her original life.

Iris struggled with a child's guilt about the way that she was manipulating her family and life, but intellectually she knew she was doing the right thing. There was no reason for her to sit through elementary school when she knew the material- the point of going to school was to learn, not to pay dues by sitting quietly for a set number of years. And she shouldn't feel guilty for getting Lily into dance class- it would only help her, by promoting athleticism and by introducing her to a new art form. But she couldn't help but wonder what Lily's childhood was supposed to be like. She might be missing out on something that helped define her as a human being or bond with her family.

Iris flipped over and buried her face in the pillow, trying to calm her beating heart. Child's brains weren't meant to hold this much information, or equipped to cope with emotionally and intellectually scarring memories of war and death. Hermione and Harry had never had time to deal with their own issues, because they'd never had enough time to slow down and let it catch up with them. Now that she wasn't concentrating on fighting for her life, she was trying to avoid the resentment built by someone else's childhood mistreatment and adolescent trauma from being forced into martyrdom and leadership. She had a hard time relating to most people- she saw only the bleating cowards who chose to hide behind a small group of untrained and unequipped children and demonize them when they struggled.

But people weren't like that. She was enjoying getting to know her muggle family. Granted, she disliked that her parents were sexist, but that didn't mean they were cowards or bad people. They were just the products of an earlier time. Her father was devoted and hard-working, and her mother was the very epitome of a loving mother and produced beautiful, creative things in the house. She sewed the girls' clothes, and designed wooden furniture (that her husband would construct for her) that she would paint bright colors with interlocking, intricate flower designs. And her sister Petunia could be petty at times, but she was also funny, caring, dutiful, and possessed a biting wit that Iris generally enjoyed, even when she wasn't meant to get the joke.

In short, Iris knew that her emotional response to people was flawed. The way that she tallied her emotional responses and compared them to her intellectual knowledge smacked of Hermione's thought processes. In a way, this was almost comforting. Iris and Hermione were very compatible personalities, and didn't really bother each other. Her main problem was unwanted emotional responses to things that reminded her of unfair, frightening or infuriating circumstances. It was hard to explain losing her temper when her mother idly mentioned some public opinion poll or bursting into tears when she saw a homeless man or a violent film was advertised.

In the end, Iris knew that she needed to get access to some counseling or to talk to someone. Her first resort would be Fleur or Victor- assuming that was possible. As soon as she had contact with the wizarding world, she would track their families down to see if her prediction about their fate had been right. She was assuming that she had merged with Harry's consciousness because the ritual had been intended for three people and her recalculations to change it to four had been insufficient. She could still be wrong, however. Fleur and Victor could have merged, or ceased to exist completely, or never left the original timeline. She might have killed her friends through her failure. But there was no point in worrying about it now, years before she could hope to find out what had happened. Iris had gone to her parents and told them that she was struggling with nightmares and felt angry at other people all the time. They hadn't been keen on the idea of counseling and seemed to be hoping it was a phase or an exaggeration, but they would turn around in time if she persisted. They did only want the best for her. Of course, it would be hard to evade questions about a seven-year old with unexplained post-traumatic-stress-disorder.

She made trips to the library with Petunia and tracked down introductory texts on mental illness-mainly split personality disorder and PTSD, but she didn't find anything useful. She would need to get to the university library- what Iris needed was to understand her condition (or the closest thing that muggles had) in order to cope with it. She could learn from a textbook on how to learn to tell people to cope as well as she could someone who had learnt from that book, after all.

Section Break

She played sick from school (where she was now in the ninth grade, a fact which worried her parents immensely) and took the train to the local uni after her mother tucked her into bed and went to do the grocery shopping. The student workers seemed to find it adorable that she was picking up books for her big sister (although they kept looking around as though they expected to see her) and let her make her very own city resident account. With her purple backpack full, she hightailed it back home, hiding her bag under a bush in the backyard and sneaked back into the house. Her mother had beat her home by a matter of minutes and had noticed that she wasn't in her room, but believed the excuse that she'd been coloring in the basement playroom.

She did have to spend the rest of the day coloring and sketching to cover her ass, but it was worth it. It was rather enjoyable to have her mother admire her surprisingly sophisticated depictions of women in pretty dresses (either Iris was shockingly talented, or Harry had been hiding something, because the artistic talent did NOT come from Hermione's experience). Her mother actually took out some of her old books and shared illustrations of classical work and talked a bit about her favorite pieces and artists. For the first time, Iris genuinely admired her mother intellectually. It made sense that both of Lily's parents had been intelligent- she had had quite a reputation for academics, even a decade and a half after she'd died- but it was still a bit unexpected to see her demure mother be so passionate and knowledgeable. When her family came home, they spent the night on the floor in the living room playing Monopoly and Clue, drinking hot chocolate and eating terrifying amounts of crackers and cheese. Iris stored the memory as something to draw back on when she needed a Patronus.

Section Break

That night, Iris and Lily argued quietly from their beds. Lily wasn't sure that she thought that Severus was right- she wanted to tell their parents about how they were special. Iris didn't exactly think that was wrong, but she was worried about their reaction. It was one thing for a professor to show up and inform them that their children were special, but it was something different for your small child to come to you with a story about how their friend told them they were witches. At best, they would assume it was a silly fantasy. When Lily inevitably got upset and tried to prove it, they might believe it… or they might panic. Iris was prepared to let sleeping dogs sleep- Petunia had apparently forced herself to forget about what she had seen.

Of course, if they could get adults involved, it would be a different story. That meant that they had to get access to the wizarding world somehow- Severus was the obvious choice. Except that his father was a muggle who hated the wizarding world, and his mother was deceased. Lily and Iris were the only magical people he'd had contact with, so he obviously wasn't going to be any help. But his strict concern about keeping things secret from their family lead to an idea.

If Iris or Lily had an incident of 'accidental' magic large enough to require ministry obliviators, their parents would have to believe them. Granted, Lily didn't understand that the obliviators would be coming to steal memories rather than explain things, but Severus hadn't gone into detail as to why Muggles couldn't know about magic or how it was enforced and Iris was sticking with information she could explain away having. It didn't matter that they intended to make the muggles forget- the ministry workers would have to explain the wizarding world to their parents- muggle parents of witches did have a legal right to know under the statute of secrecy- and then they could get started on their training. Iris and Lily started brainstorming ideas of what they could do in public that Muggles wouldn't be able to dismiss as merely strange. Both of their parents would have to be there, which narrowed things down considerably. They spent most of their family time at home.

What 'accidental' magic they could actually perform would be a problem as well- wandless, untrained magic was far harder than what they would learn in school. Iris would be surprised if actual seven year olds could manage much more than changing colors and making light. They had to affect a large enough area to draw a lot of attention, but neither of them should have the reserves to change more than a couple of objects. Of course, changing the color of one large object wasn't any harder than changing the color of one small object. As for other resources… Iris had her fire, but perhaps that wouldn't be a good choice for making a good impression on their parents. Of course, she could use it to heat things without making the actual flames obvious…

The date that they chose ended up being about a week later, when the family went on a trip to the beach. Lily didn't seem concerned, but Iris felt a bit guilty about complicating their vacation day. Unlike her hyper sister (even Petunia had noticed that something was up) Iris knew that today would rather be shocking and unpleasant for the adults. No one liked finding out that they had systematically been kept in ignorance about a whole series of abilities that could change their lives, especially if they didn't get to join that world. Lily's job was to turn the water into a rainbow of colors for as far in each direction as she could. She'd been practicing that in the bathtub and shower for days- she could do it, but she had to be in a very good mood and very focused. Iris wouldn't be surprised if Lily failed this time, but she could easily cover and let Lily think it was her. Iris' official job would be to improvise to make things as flashy as possible.

They ended up picking out the wide, shallow wading range that their parents set up towels in front of. When they were slathered with sun lotion and released to go to the water for the first time, they grabbed each others' hands, grinned at each other conspiratorially, and sprinted to the water, shrieking and giggling madly. With their parents' attention assured, Iris forced the water where they entered to splash far further than it was meant to- and as Lily successfully willed it to turn brilliant pinks and reds that rippled far past where the girls were playing, Iris had the sand nearest the edge of the water to turn into shiny purple glass with obnoxious glitter. Then, casual as you please, she dove under the water, came up, and splashed her sister with water that had made its way to green at that point. Lily giggled and bent over to wet her hair. Iris took the chance to sneak a look back at her parents. Her mother was white-faced, and her father let out an exclamation, haltingly moving towards their place in the water. Other beach goers were beginning to point and look at where the two girls were standing. Lily's smile faded and Iris forced her face to relax despite the fact that things were going according to plan. They were pretending to have been so excited that they prettified the beach, so obviously in that scenario they hadn't been expecting anything strange to happen. Lily reached out questioningly and Iris took her hand, feeling colder now.

A series of cracks punctuated the air. As beach-going muggles shrieked, a witch and two wizards in red robes appeared and assessed the situation. Iris thought that she saw interest in one of the men's expressions when their eyes connected, but he turned away. Iris spotted the witch's mouth moving, counting the witnesses silently. Iris already knew that there were eight- their family of three Muggles, a mother and toddler, and a group of adolescent girls sunbathing.

The group of girls got it first. The Ministry workers each bit out an 'Obliviate' that left them instantly stiff and catatonic. One girl fell over. The young mother screamed, and the witch whipped around with twirling robes to silence her and modify her memory. Lily's hand was cold and hard in her hand as a man turned to point his wand at their family. This wasn't right. The obliviators were supposed to assess the situation- find out what had happened, who was allowed to see what had happened and only then **_gently_**modify memories. "Wait!" Iris screamed. Lily interjected "That's my mum. Don't hurt my mum!" Iris tore out of the water, slipping on the wet glass. She hadn't made it ten feet before the Obliviators finished communicating silently and raised their wands on Petunia and their parents. Lily ran into Iris's back, visibly confused and sobbing quietly as their mother slid to her knees and fell on her side as though she was taking an impromptu nap.

The man who had looked at the girls with interest walked over and clapped Iris's shoulder. "Sorry, it's the law. That was rather is impressive work, though. How old are you two?" He knelt directly in front of her, looking into her face.

Iris was unable to answer, still in shock. Everything had gone so wrong. Lily was the one who muttered an answer. All three adults looked surprised. The woman nudged the older male who hadn't spoken, asking "Haff you ever seen muggleborn tweens? This ees most unusual even in Britain, yes?" If he answered, the twins didn't hear it. Lily was shaking madly, still clutching Iris' waist from behind.

Iris stared at Petunia, who was unnaturally still on the sand and blinking slowly. She barely noticed the silent man cast a massed 'Finite' that set the beach back to rights. The friendlier man looked at them uneasily. "They're going to be fine. They just won't remember anything that they shouldn't, that's all. That's our job- we work for the Ministry of Magic. Trust me, we do this every day." He tousled her hair. With another round of horrible cracks, the group was gone and the girls were alone with the still beach. Lily shook like leaf in the wind as their mother recovered and continued rubbing lotion into Petunia's shoulders. Their father smiled over at them and called out "The water is warm, girls! Get on in." Iris stood with leaden feet as Lily pushed past her at a run and hugged her rather confused father fiercely.


	5. Trips Going Nowhere Good

We finally get to Hogwarts and a bit of plot this chapter! I still own nothing.

Lily and Iris sat alone in their bedroom, not talking or looking at each other. They could hear their mother's singing from downstairs. She had been strange since the obliviation incident. Her memory was spotty- she didn't just forget things that had happened that day.

Her memories pertaining to the twins had been permanently altered. It was as if a neurological link that had allowed her to access memories about them in general was simply gone instead of a memory of one incident of them doing magic. She never sought them out, and after school she made snacks for only Petunia. Unless prompted, she only made enough plates for three people.

She seemed very stressed and confused, and looked at all of them as if there was something very strange about them- even their father and Petunia. Their father was worried and confused. It was obvious that something was very wrong. It was clear to the twins that the obliviators had been far too overzealous. Despite knowing that, they couldn't risk talking to the adults about it. Who knew what could happen if the Obliviators got sent out again?

It was possible that St. Mungos could sort her out… if they could find a way to get her there, and soon. Severus had been nearly as upset at the Ministry's incompetence and heartlessness as they were, but he wasn't sure that St. Mungos would even treat a Muggle. Nonetheless, he had told them what he knew about finding Diagon Alley. With his limited knowledge, Iris could semi-believably stumble upon the rest of the way. At this point, she wasn't as concerned with keeping her cover as she was with getting her mum medical attention.

While their mum was busy not remembering that they existed, the twins slipped out the front door and met Severus at the bus station. They were rather smartly dressed in matching grey dresses with black-buckled shoes, and Severus looked considerably less ragged than he had when they'd first met, clad in black slacks and an oversized t shirt that used to belong to Petunia (Azalea had gone on a furious campaign to wardrobe Severus, even dragging him out on a trip to visit a series of secondhand shops and cheaper shoe stores to get him a full wardrobe that would work for the next couple of growth spurts).

All in all, they would blend in around Diagon Alley rather well, assuming customs hadn't changed too much between the sixties and the nineties and muggle dress clothes were still (or was it already?) worn under robes.

After a bumpy and silent bus ride, they got off and began to walk to the street Severus had identified as the one with the Leaky Cauldron. Their timing was unfortunate- it had started to rain shortly before they got off.

They walked into the Leaky Cauldron shivering and huddled together like puppies. They got some very strange looks inside, and the barkeep wasn't especially keen to open up the alley for them, but he wasn't in a mood to argue about it when he had customers waiting either. Iris felt a pang of regret when she realized that Lily's first glimpse of the alley had been ruined.

It didn't look marvelous and magical today. It looked dreary, drab, and filthy as patrons scurried between buildings as quickly as possible, scowling. Severus frowned. "It doesn't look as good as I thought it would", he finally said. "I expected it to look more… magic, you know? Like magic is supposed to make everything better." Feeling resentful, Iris muttered "Not everything", thinking of her poor mother.

Lily halfheartedly piped in "It's not so bad. Just old and dirty. The shops are kinda cool." Looking uncertain, she grabbed for Severus' hand. "Do… do you think the ministry is around here? Maybe we could talk to them." Severus snapped "No!" at that. At Lily's startled look, he clarified. "The Ministry is supposed to be really bad. My mother always hated them. They could just take our memories too so we stop complaining, and then no one will ever know what is wrong with your mum."

It was that moment when Iris realized that Severus really had always been a paranoid bastard, and that he was possibly right. Not that she thought the Ministry would obliviate them (although she'd been wrong before).

But the Ministry was grossly incompetent. They wouldn't consider admitting that they'd made a mistake, and certainly wouldn't correct it. They'd tell the girls that they were wrong and their mother was fine, or that she'd always been that way, or that it was a Muggle disease instead of helping. Iris felt a fresh surge of hate at the thought of how cruel, bloated and useless their magical government was.

Someday, she thought viciously, someday she'd burn the place to the ground. Her beloved sister wasn't going to have to deal with a bigoted, backwards bunch of morons. Why had she ever considered the Ministry to be less of a problem than Voldemort? They probably killed more people through false imprisonment, abuse of power and gross negligence that Voldemort and his band of merry morons ever killed on purpose. The Ministry was better at Dark-Lording things than that Dark Lord was, for crap's sake.

Iris didn't know if she hated the Obliviators who had hurt her family, or the Ministry that gave them their orders more. She was going to make them both pay eventually.

The trip was a bust. It turned out that Muggle clothes were rather taboo in 1960s Diagon Alley. They only got directions to the hospital on their third try- the first adult they asked ignored them, and the second, a younger teenager, sneered and informed them that he hoped the "sick little mudbloods" died on the street. Severus looked like he had been punched in the gut. Lily was visibly disturbed- she didn't know what the words meant, but the tone was unmistakable.

They finally got lucky with a matronly woman who walked them to the lobby, who they let labor under the impression that their mother was already a patient and they had wandered out and gotten lost. She smoothed down Severus' hair and passed out hugs before she left them, assuring them that things would work out.

Despite her claims, St. Mungos itself wasn't much more cheering. It was bustling, and no one wanted to take a group of children seriously. The greeter witch popped her blue bubblegum at them and informed Severus that they didn't treat Muggles in St. Mungos for legal reasons. They attempted to flag a mediwitch, but she was only a little more sympathetic. When they explained that the Ministry had illegally obliviated their mother and botched it, she took her break and gently explained that it was a federal crime to interfere in Ministry-sanctioned Obliviation and that she would lose her job and their mother would just be re-Obliviated if she attempted to help. Her recommendation was letting their mother think that she had a stroke and going into counseling.

The girls cried themselves to sleep that night, and many others.

Section Break

Years passed. Their home fell apart. Their mother grew dangerously thin and didn't seem to know whether she wanted to ignore the girls or cry when she saw them. She wasn't doing well in therapy- they couldn't find any physical problems, but she didn't improve. Eventually, her moods grew extreme and she was frequently depressed. She'd lost years of her life- she remembered graduating college, having Petunia at age 22, and raising her for a few years. Then suddenly she was 36 years old with two children she couldn't remember and a husband who was shockingly old to her. As for the girls- all Lily did was study, and she ended up jumping up two grades. Their father tried- he really did. But he couldn't make everything ok again, and he brooded at nights, occasionally yelling at the three girls. Petunia spent less and less time out with friends, preferring to stay at home and help their mother keep the house up. And then came the Hogwarts letters.

Their father didn't say a word to the twins. He simply poured himself drink after drink. After a while, he asked them if their magic was to blame for their mother's condition. They had to say yes and explain what had happened and that they had been too scared to try to tell him again, since he or Petunia might get hurt if the Obliviators came again. His face grew dark and terrible. He left the room silently and they didn't see him again until after dinner. Their mother left to lay down for a rest, but the remainder of the family was lingering at the table.

"So, these people want you to go to their school." He stated, staring them both down. "and when people who aren't like you disagree with them, they take their memories." Lily bowed her head and Iris nodded silently. "So… I don't have a choice here. I have to send you with these people to avoid further endangering our family.

Iris clenched her jaw. She didn't think that anyone would actually force parents to let their children attend Hogwarts… except… The Dursleys had been forced to allow Harry to go. The thought made her feel ill. Muggles really had no rights in the wizarding world, not even the right to choose where their child would be educated.

Their father sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Girls… I know that this isn't your fault at all. But this government is dangerous. I think you two are safe in this world. But the rest of us aren't. The rest of this family is going to have nothing to do with your magic."

Petunia stiffened, and opened her mouth to protest. He gently scolded "It's dangerous, you know it is. Iris… Lily. You are my baby girls, and I love you. But this is how things are going to go. You will write home only about normal things- boys, having trouble with schoolwork, making friends. That kind of thing. But there will be no mention of magic in this home, and no more of this kind of thing," he gestured at the owl docilely sitting on the counter. "I will pay for your schooling and supplies. But… after this school year, you are going to be out of my house. You're going to find out how to get emancipated in your world, and I will sign the papers and pay for a flat for the summers."

He leaned forward. "I love you two. We're still family, and I will support you financially. Ask me for whatever you need- I can drop off groceries, pay someone to cook, whatever you need. But I can't risk these people having reason to hurt us again. You won't be coming back into this house again. We'll meet for dinners and Petunia can go over to visit you at your flat, if she wants to risk it. She's almost graduated. She's old enough to make her own decisions." He took a long, shaky breath.

"But I won't be going there. I've got to think of my wife and Petunia. If those people do to me what they did to your mother, no one will support this family." He stood with difficulty and watched Petunia and Lily cling to each other and cry for a moment, then went to the master bedroom and closed the door quietly.

Iris rested her head on the table as her eyes welled up with tears. This was her fault. It really was. Lily's family had never been broken like this in the original timeline. Petunia had always been bitter that their parents were excited to have a witch in the family and that she couldn't go with Lily. Iris noted that at least she had probably succeeded in preventing Petunia from avoiding the girls over this. There was nothing to be jealous of now that it was clear they were being forced to go into a barbaric, hostile environment. The thought was cold comfort at best.

Petunia was the one who went with them and Professor McGonagall to Diagon Alley. The professor was clearly curious as to why their parents were uninvolved, but briskly took them through a tour, showing Petunia where to exchange money and shrinking the school supplies for them. Petunia was a bit unnerved about bringing the "witch supplies" back to the house, but there was no other choice. She opted to have them carry their textbooks normally- which was a pain, since they had gotten their books for up to third year- and sealed everything else inside their trunks to be left alone until they left for the train.

Lily studied her textbooks furiously, eager to finish the first year texts and get to the books on Wizarding customs and laws in relation to Muggles that Iris had purchased. Iris knew they wouldn't have what Lily was looking for, but she gamely flipped through them anyway. Parents of Muggleborns weren't forbidden to know what their children were, but it wasn't illegal for the Ministry to exercise their own judgment about what they should know and when. Petunia fluttered ineffectually around the house, both interested in and repulsed by their textbooks and what they would be learning. They hardly saw their father in the weeks before September first.

The day they left, Lily stood silently in the kitchen door, just looking at their childhood home. Iris watched her with a breaking heart. It was terrifying to know that they would never be coming back. Although Hermione had a happy childhood, this place and time had been her real home for years. Petunia drove the twins and Severus to the station in complete silence, straightening all of their clothes and pressing packed lunches into their hands outside the station. All three of them, even a surprised Severus, got swept up into a bone-breaking hug and kissed goodbye.

The train Hermione and Harry had found so cheery looked more forbidding than anything to them, slick and bloody red, as they boarded and found an empty compartment towards the back. Severus immediately devoured his lunch, causing the girls to crack a smile for the first time and feed him their own sandwiches.

They were interrupted twice, first by a group of older students who forced them to leave the compartment. Bristling at the injustice, the group had to leave their trunks and trudge to the next compartment with free space. They eventually found one with a single nervous first year in it and settled in. Iris casually examined the stranger. He was one of the smallest first years she remembered seeing, very pale with sandy hair. He was also clearly uncomfortable with their presence and borderline cowering. Severus frowned at their co-occupant. "Oh, stop cowering," he ordered crossly. "You reek of weakness. None of us bite." The boy flinched and became even paler, if that were possible. "Oh, stop it." Lily scolded Severus with a light slap to his arm. Iris watched with a smile.

Severus wrenched away and retorted "Well, he's going to get the shit beaten out of him if he looks like that at school! Bullies will spot that he has no self esteem from a mile away." Iris snorted at his faux-worldliness, but Lily gasped, outraged. "Sev, that was rude! Don't talk like that!"

Iris scooted over and nudged the quiet boy, giving him a winning smile. "Now they're at it again. Don't worry about them- they do this all the time," she confided. "They argue like old hens. I'm Iris. What's your name?" she asked innocently, even though she already knew the answer would be- "Remus Lupin".

"That's a really cool name," she complimented with a little more enthusiasm than was necessary. She had been pretty sure it was him, of course, but having it confirmed was wonderful. Really, he was the first friendly face she'd actually recognized since she woke up in the sixties. He looked a little surprised at how happy she was to meet him, but she decided not to do things by halves anyways. With a grin she grabbed his hand and shook it, informing him in an airy tone that "I have decided you will be my reserve best friend for when Lily is gone. I will need someone to hang out with me when these two lovebirds finally hook up."

Lily and Severus looked at her with wide eyes. "Gross!" Severus exclaimed over Lily's reflexive "he's not my boyfriend!"

Remus smiled for the first time since they'd entered the compartment. It was a rather crooked thing that Iris thought would be roguishly fetching in a few years.

Iris leaned back, satisfied, and asked "So, have you looked at your textbooks yet? We've all read ours already." She knew damn well that he probably had. He'd been the studious one of the Marauders, after all. His expression was answer enough, which was good because that was about the time the door slid open with the second interruption of the ride- a prefect in green robes who stuck her head inside. She looked at the four first years as if they smelled foully. "You should put on your robes. You look like fucking Muggles". She declared. "Utter trash. Here's hoping you all get sent home. Assuming that doesn't happen, you need to get ready. We arrive in about ten minutes. Try to look a little less disgraceful." The door slammed shut with an air of finality.

Lily spoke first, in a tremulous voice. "The people here aren't very nice. I… want to go home." Severus looked even more upset at the snub than she did. "That was a Slytherin prefect," he stated. "I'd wanted to get in Slytherin. I don't know that I want to spend seven years with people like that."

Remus pulled at his ragged sleeve self-consciously, and Iris slapped at his hand. "No, no, no guys." She announced. "We are not feeling bad or re-considering life-long ambitions because we met one girl who was a total asshat. We may avoid Slytherin if we do detect a pattern, but one constipated upperclassman does not a pattern make." It was a sign of the seriousness of the situation that Lily didn't try to scold her for language.

"We are going to kick ass and take names, and I don't care what crabby upperclassmen have to say. Which reminds me, Remus, take a note: We need to find out her name, and then write it down." He cracked a grin. She continued "Lily- You are our organizer. You will be compiling the list of asses in need of kicking. Can you and Sev hunt down an appropriate notebook, or failing that, decorate an inappropriate one?"


	6. The Prodigal Daughter's Return- Day One

The boat trip was mildly amusing. Iris caught her first sight of Sirius and James, who had managed to fall madly in love with each other already. She idly wondered if they had been friends before Hogwarts. The Blacks were unlikely to have let them associate if James' parents were as liberal as he was, but then again a family doesn't end up going hundreds of years without mixing in so much as a drop of muggle blood on accident. They were probably not much more accepting than the Blacks.

Sirius and James had both taken a dive into the water when the two angry-looking children sharing a boat with them had gotten tired of their shit and flipped the boat. The shit-eating grin she could barely see under the blonde hair plastered to a little boy's face told her that he thought it was worth it. She gave him a covert thumbs-up, which he didn't seem to understand. Frankly, that was perfect- they might have shied away from picking on a muggleborn when they decided to buck pureblood dogma.

Someone needed to mess with those guys, and if she was lucky those two might have taken Severus's envied position of their rival and victim for the next seven years. If she kept Severus out of Slytherin, they might never notice him and whatever about him that had initially made them dislike him. Iris carefully kept any guilt or pity at bay. Difficulty built character. Just think of Harry- he'd had lots of character by first year, so that kid was probably way behind. Of course, Harry hadn't been doing so hot. He'd basically sunk into the back of her head. She either needed to get him out into a body of his own or accept that he was functionally dead soon.

Iris had idly considered how she would get him a body of his own without killing someone innocent or putting him in a body that would end up in jail. She had a few ideas, but they were experimental at best. She'd dug into her mindscape and found Harry in a small, dark space sleeping. He didn't want to be roused, but when he briefly woke up he gave her permission to try anything.

Hopefully, Hogwarts' library would be useful for this long-term project, though perhaps not as useful as the muggle science texts she had brought. The question of how she was going to get the appropriate genetic material from both Lily and James without freaking them the hell out (because if she was going the fetus route, she was damn well going to do it right) was so far unanswered. Of course… she could simply wait until they actually got together and Lily was pregnant and get his consciousness in there. He'd have to suffer through a few boring years of drooling on people, but that couldn't be much worse than his current state of stasis in her head.

Iris was the first of their group to be sorted, and clapped for Lily and Remus when they joined her at the Gryffindor table. The only one she had really been worried about was Severus… Who ended up going to Ravenclaw. She quietly pitied them. He was going to eat them alive. It could only have been funnier if he'd gone to Hufflepuff, which she was willing to bet had been the hat's second choice for him. Severus was indeed book smart, but he was also unfailingly loyal to his first friends. That would have been hilarious. Iris sighed for lost opportunities. He would have been adorable in yellow, all bitter and quivering with rage.

That night in their dormitory, Iris and Lily introduced themselves to their new dorm mates- A rather exuberant girl named Alice, who Iris rather suspected was Neville's mother, a blonde named Lauren, and the withdrawn Joan who spent the first night organizing her belongings just-so. Lily didn't seem interested in becoming friends with any of them, being polite but distant. Iris followed that lead, and ended up taking Lily out to explore the castle.

They got gloriously 'lost', giggling and, uh, _somehow_ stumbling upon the room of requirement that very first night. The portraits seemed amused at their antics, occasionally helping them evade patrolling adults. Apparently, they didn't mind helping a couple of adorable first years make mischief. They were even directed to the entrance for the kitchens, and stayed out until two am drinking hot cocoa. At one point on their way back to Gryffindor, they actually passed the Headmaster. He had pretended not to see them in a way that made it painfully obvious he was amused and he wanted them to know he'd seen them. Even if he hadn't seen them, he definitely would have heard the giggles.

They slept on the fluffy couches in the common room instead of risking disturbing their roommates by sneaking in. Iris woke up to find Sirius looking curiously at the two of them, although he quickly averted his eyes when he saw that she was awake.

"Aren't… Why were you sleeping down here?" He asked curiously. "What's wrong with your room?"

Amused, Iris replied "Nothing is wrong with our room. We just spent so much time talking and …" Here, she paused to give a faux-covert glance around the room "_exploring_ the castle. Anyway, by the time we were ready to go to bed, we were worried about waking up the other girls."

Sirius looked interested. "You already snuck out?" he asked with a little admiration. "I wanted to explore, but it didn't occur to me to go out on the first night. I just went straight to bed. Hogwarts is really wicked, though. Gryffindor is awesome!" He grinned.

She nodded. "Yes, it's nice." Inwardly she smiled, this was the perfect time to make a mention of Severus so that Sirius wouldn't want to bully him."I had a friend who really wanted to get into Slytherin, but the prefects were so mean to us on the train that he asked for Ravenclaw." With a conspiratorial whisper, she added "I bet the hat wanted to put him in Hufflepuff, on account of how he changed what house he wanted because someone from the other house was unkind to his friends."

Sirius frowned. "Yeah, Slytherin… All my family is in Slytherin. They expected me to go there too." Changing tones to something much less morose, Sirius asked "So you already know people from before school? I pretty much only know the Slytherin kids, and I'm not going to be spending time with them."

"Well, I have a twin sister also in Gryffindor, so I have a built in friend. We're also friends with that boy I mentioned- he lived really close growing up. I guess I also met a really nice guy on the train, but he's in Gryffindor now so you probably already met him. My sister is Lily, and the Ravenclaw boy is Severus. And I am Iris". She held her hand out for a shake. Sirius looked at it, a bit bemused, but eventually reached out and gently turned it over and kissed her fingers. Despite the fact that she was a full-grown woman, she blushed when he informed her "I'm Sirius Black".

A bit flustered, she mumbled, "Well, I expected a handshake but that was nice too. Um. Anyway! Would you be willing to escort me to breakfast? I'm starving."

Sirius looked her over, and politely agreed. "Of course, but you may wish to retire upstairs and get ready first. Not that I don't approve of going to breakfast in your pajamas, but I don't know that we have time to change before we go to class after the meal."

**Section Break**

Classes were a bit mind-numbing. They only had Potions and Charms with Ravenclaws, so Lily was a bit antsy waiting to meet up with Sev. Potions weren't until Wednesday, but at least they had Charms as their last Monday class, so the wait wouldn't be too long.

Transfiguration was nostalgic. Iris smiled, remembered the way that Harry and Ron had skidded in late. Everyone was there this time around when Professor McGonagall leapt off of the edge of her desk and transformed back in the air. Lily's face burnt red when she saw that- when she had walked in and spotted the kitty, she had immediately rushed up to the front desk to stroke and coo at the "pretty little kitty". Iris leant over and poked Lily, muttering "Well, I guess that explains why she was strangely stingy with the nose kisses and purring." Lily wrinkled her nose at Iris, clearly displeased at the teasing but not willing to retaliate in a teacher's presence.

Iris didn't hold back when it came to the lesson- she tapped her matchstick and transformed it into a needle on the first try, adding a shiny red stone at the top just to be ostentatious. The Professor was more than a little surprised- Other than her, only James managed the task perfectly before the class was over, and that was ten minutes before the end. She didn't say a word about it until the class had been dismissed, however.

"Miss Evans, would you stay behind?" Lily stopped in her tracks, alarmed. Iris felt her lips quirk upwards. She was relatively certain that her sister thought she was going to be reprimanded for petting the professor. Amused, Iris turned to face the Professor and asked, "Do you mean Lily or myself, ma'am?" Professor McGonagall cracked a rare smile and admitted "I should have specified. Yes, I meant Miss Iris Evans. I won't be keeping your sister long, however. She shall meet you at the noon meal, certainly." She directed at Lily, who nodded and hustled out of the nearly empty room.

"Follow me, please". Professor McGonagall instructed briskly and turned around, locking the classroom door and taking her next door to her office. She sat behind the desk and Iris took the armchair across from her. "Biscuit? Tea?" McGonagall offered.

Iris was more than a little surprised, but she gamely took both offers. They sat for a moment in silence, just nursing steaming cups. With a little cough, her Professor set down her cup and looked at her Gryffindor. "Miss Evans, I was very impressed with your performance in my class today. Had you tried that transfiguration before today- on the train, perhaps?"

"No, ma'am", she murmured, hiding behind her tea. "I hadn't tried it before. I just knew that I could do it. I've always liked making one thing into another."

"That is….astounding. Miss Evans, I have never seen a student perform a perfect transfiguration of their very first try. It is practically unheard of." She was clearly fighting a grin at this point. "This is most exciting. Could I trouble you to attempt a few more low-level transfigurations?"

By the time Iris had been released from Professor McGonagall's office, the older woman was practically shaking with excitement. Iris felt a little bad about letting the Professor think she was a prodigy-she was, of course, but it didn't feel quite right. Professor McGonagall had walked her down the hall to the Great Hall, thanking her for her cooperation and informing Iris that she would be having a discussion with the Headmaster about arranging a more challenging schedule. Iris refused to feel guilty. She needed to become competent in ways that performing the regular curriculum wouldn't allow.

It turned out that she had managed to beat her sister to lunch, but the first year boys seemed to be there. Iris bit her lip, trying to decide where to take a seat. She saw Sirius and James talking animatedly at the center of the table with some older boys. Pettigrew was there as well, stuffing his face with bread and occasionally interjecting some platitude. But… Remus was sitting alone at the far end of the table. She winced.

Apparently, introductions and the first night had not gone well. He was clearly miserable, hunched over as if to hide from anyone's sight and concentrating on his empty plate as if it was interesting beyond comparison. She swallowed the part of her that wanted to see what the vigorous conversation was about and strode over to Remus, sliding in unnecessarily close to him and giving him a squeeze. Sirius glanced up at her as she went by and watched with an indecipherable expression when she passed his spot.

Remus stiffened when she hugged him, clearly aware that Sirius was staring. Iris settled into her seat as if nothing was wrong and poured herself a glass of water. Noting that Remus had also shunned the pumpkin juice, she cheerily asked "Not a fan of the pumpkin, either?" He swallowed, and carefully replied "No, I don't like it much. I never have. It's too sweet for a drink."

"What, do you not like things like juice or hot chocolate at all?" She asked. "Because I am a big hot chocolate drinker. Lily and I found the kitchens last night and had mugs. It's pretty glorious. The house elves make it with great mounds of whipped cream with cinnamon on top." At that point, she noted that Lily had entered and gave a wave, but Lily merely smiled at her and bounced over to the Ravenclaw table to snuggle up next to Severus.

Her companion smiled. "Well, hot chocolate is different, of course. Food of the gods and all that. Where did you find the kitchens?" '_Hook, line, and sinker,'_ Iris thought. Outwardly, she only smiled and said "I can show you tonight, if you'd like? Lily and I like to explore, and we will definitely need more chocolate to get through the night." She saw Sirius look over at her, a little wounded. She knew he'd want to adventure, but he had other friends to go with. Idly, she wondered how Remus had come to be on such bad terms with his housemates already. He was a very sweet boy. He was, however, unused to socializing with other kids, and his vocabulary was straight out of a book. "We might be meeting with Sev tonight, though. Is that ok? I know that he comes off as a little.. well…"

Remus haltingly offered "acerbic?". He looked as if he expected her to slap at him. Instead, she smiled and said "Yeah, that about sums it up. Excellent vocabulary. In fact, I would like to commission a list of words that describe Severus, so that I may use them to fluster him. Could you help me brainstorm that later?"

He pushed his hair off of his face shyly and ducked his head. "Yeah, that could be fun. I don't mind spending time with Severus. I would like to go out tonight." He paused, and uncertainly asked "Did... Did you find the library?"

She outright laughed at that, and put her arm around his shoulders. "You and I, my friend, are going to get along brilliantly. You ask just the right questions." She fluttered her lashes at him. "You have come to the expert! For I am Hermione, the Greek Goddess of awesomeness and dentistry, patron of library research!" He snickered. "I don't think I've heard of that particular goddess. I thought that was just a Shakespeare character." She smiled rather sadly. "Yeah, she's rather new."


	7. Routine

This chapter takes us through the end of first year, because eleven year olds don't get to do many interesting things. I'm not interested in detailing their classes and humorous misunderstandings, so I'm just not going to.

I do want to thank the lovely individuals who have been so good about reviewing!

Remus, Iris and Lily sat at breakfast rubbing their eyes and fighting not to yawn over their coffee. A few nearby older students looked more than a little disapproving at the beverage of choice, but made no comment. At the nearby Ravenclaw table, Severus looked just as miserable, although he seemed to be channeling his irritation into frightening his housemates into silence. Iris and Lily had spent two nights in a row out late, but the boys appeared to be feeling just as weary after only one.

They'd been so busy and excited that they hadn't gotten to bed until far later than they should have. True to her word, Iris had taken the motley crew to the library first. They'd nearly ended up staying there all night.

Thankfully, the tension between Remus and Severus (mostly coming from Severus, to be perfectly frank) had dissipated over the night. Severus had cautiously decided that Remus was both intelligent and non-threatening enough to spend time with the twins.

She grinned at the thought, more than a little proud that she'd managed to assemble such an elite company of bookworms. It was like the Avengers or the Fantastic Four or something, only cooler, because she was involved. Besides, her real superhero crew was probably divided between France and Bulgaria. She sobered up.

She needed to find a way to track down her friends, and preferably one more expedient than going through back issues of foreign newspapers on a hunt for birth announcements. She considered the idea. England had registries for citizens with non-human descent. It was possible that France did as well. From there she could look for twin girls. As for Viktor… well. She didn't know if Krum was a common surname, but at least she had that to go off of. She drew out a pen and notebook (because she wasn't dealing with quills when she absolutely didn't have to) and jotted a note to herself about making an inquiry to the bookstore about foreign texts and newspapers.

Her group had been breezing through all of their classes so far, and other students were already beginning to notice. Her professors so far were pretty impressed with the group, but mostly her- and rightfully so, because she hadn't been holding back at all. She rather liked the idea of letting all of the bigots think that there was a muggleborn so brilliant that she'd drawn the attention of all of her professors in the first two days of class.

Today was their first Potions class. Iris was amused to note that Professor Slughorn seemed to have already heard about the especially brilliant Gryffindors, as he was clearly paying more attention to their side of the room than the Ravenclaw. This was a mistake, because Potions was where Severus was really going to shine. Sure enough, he produced the first and best example of the assignment. Poor Slughorn didn't even notice, and Severus didn't try to draw his attention. He instead pulled out his textbook and began reading, occasionally making notes on the pages. Iris smothered a grin as Slughorn stalked about the classroom in search of brilliance, completely missing that the prodigy was on the other side of the room.

Later, Lily berated him for not letting Slughorn know that he'd finished first. He'd given Iris five points for Ravenclaw, ostensibly for finishing first. He hadn't listened to her protestation -that she'd been acting on advice Severus had given before the class even started- and had ushered them out of the classroom, looking a little disappointed.

Severus wrinkled his nose, a little perplexed. "Why would I enlighten a man who didn't even seem to consider that the house full of the intellectuals would be capable of finishing an assignment?" He flounced away, and Remus ducked his head to hide a smile at his expense. Severus wasn't quite as intimidating and scathing as he thought he was yet. He would get there, but she predicted a few more years of indignant prancing instead of dignified prowling.

That night, Severus and Lily were working on assignments in the library. Iris and Remus, who were already done, were going for a walk. Iris had a bit of an ulterior motive- she wanted to know what was going on between Remus and the other boys. She hadn't seen them be overtly hostile, other than the fact that James seemed to sneer at him when he passed, but they were clearly snubbing Remus. Iris thought that Sirius looked a little uncomfortable being rude to him whenever she saw the group at it, but he never spoke up. And Pettigrew… Pettigrew seemed to like having someone to look down on. There was no space next to them at the table and in class, and Remus took every opportunity to avoid being in the boy's dorm. He only grudgingly went up to bed after all the others were sleeping and crept out alone each morning. Frankly, it was a little worrying.

She took him to the room of requirement, which turned into a room with a big, fluffy couch full of pillows. Amused, she inquired, "So are you tired or just looking to cuddle? Because the room gives us whatever we were thinking when we entered, and I was wishing for a room that would suit your needs."

He turned bright red. "Just a little tired", he mumbled, stumbling awkwardly away from the couch. She regretted teasing him. Iris flopped down and patted the seat beside her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't tease. I know you're tired. You've been worrying me, actually. Is everything ok in your dorm? Your room mates don't seem very friendly. They seem downright rude to you, actually."

He sat a few feet away from her on the couch, looking uncomfortably down at his lap. There was a long silence, during which Iris's heart sank a little. Both of her boys were rather broken, sad people. She got the feeling that neither of them got the physical affection that they needed at home. She reached over and gently took his shoulders to guide him into a laying position with his head in her lap. She stroked his hair. "I'm sorry. You probably don't want to talk about it. Why don't you just rest? I'll wake you up when it's time to go."

They fell into routine. Remus avoided the boys like the plague (and they were a bit like a plague, Iris thought) and the Lily snubbed their other roommates for company that wore blue whenever she wasn't attached to Iris's hip. Lily seemed to like Remus alright, but she always chose to work with Severus, only deigning to work with Alice in classes Gryffindor had with non-Ravenclaw groups. If Iris wasn't so certain that Lily was destined to fall in love with James and have her best friend as their love child, she'd wonder if Severus was Lily's soul mate.

They dominated their year group- with Iris taking the first spot, Remus the second, and the other two fighting over the third and fourth spots. The Ravenclaws were starting to give the Gryffindors dirty looks, but Severus was their darling for earning so many points, even though he was decidedly lacking in team spirit.

Most days passed quickly. McGonagall had kept her word, and Iris had been summoned to a conference with Professor Dumbledore and her Head of House where they had worked out an independent schedule for Transfiguration, Charms and DADA, full of projects for her to work on after she'd completed whatever the daily assignment was. They'd tried to be discreet- she always completed the regular assignment first and let the other students think that she was merely messing around afterward. She'd stayed after Professor McGonagall had left, stroking Fawkes. She felt her wand vibrate in her pocket when he trilled, and she didn't have to fake being surprised when she put her hand on it. Harry didn't remember that ever happening when the wand had been his.

"I do believe that your wand is rather special to Fawkes, my dear" the professor calmly called out from behind her. "Phoenix feathers make rather wondrous wand cores, and Fawkes kindly donated two to my dear friend Ollivander. If I am not mistaken, one of the wands make from those feathers is in your pocket. I think, Miss Evans, that we can expect to see you do very interesting things with that wand. I look forward to it. Have a good night."

She spent a rather long time in bed that night contemplating the thin piece of wood in her hand and the expectations that went with it. She fell asleep cradling it.

Fall fled, winter rushed by, and spring only held court for a brief stint before it was time for the first years to return home for the summer. Their group of four hadn't left for Christmas (which got them some odd looks from their yearmates), so this was their first time on the return train. They spent it rather glumly, to be honest. Remus was going to be spending the summer alone, and none of them had an owl to send messages. Severus was also going alone. But the twins were going to be living on their own for the first time. They hadn't told anyone else that, not even Severus who doubtless expected that they meant their family was going on vacation when they'd told him they wouldn't be around over the summer. They didn't know where they would be staying, or if their flat was near their old house. It didn't seem likely, given that their area was a residential neighborhood full of families, not apartment buildings.

Petunia met them at the station and took them in what was apparently her new car to the flat where they would be staying. It wasn't very far from their old house, actually, but it turned out that they'd moved over the summer. Petunia had painstakingly filled it with their belongings and filled the cupboards with groceries they could easily turn into meals even on the days that she didn't come over. After she'd fixed them dinner and left, Iris and Lily sat on their beds and looked at each other, feeling glum.

They were going to have to figure out some sort of project so that the summer wasn't completely miserable.

The first project was going to have to be getting out of the flat, and possibly out of the country. It wasn't healthy to spend all summer moping around, after all. She decided she rather liked the idea of going abroad- after they met their father at a café tomorrow and had him sign their emancipation papers, all they had to do was file them and then they'd be free to do whatever magic they pleased during summers. She could whip up a few portkeys if she reviewed the process tonight. Going abroad would also be a good way to follow up on the leads she'd found on Fleur and Victor- she was sure she knew who they were, but not so sure that she'd liked to send them an owl full of incriminating information hinting at her status as a time traveler, signed with her name.

IE;

_Hi dear! Am I correct in thinking that I might have once known you by the name of Fleur? I thought that your situation might be like mine in that you are now your mother's twin. You should totes call me up, I'm going by Isis Evans these days. We really need to get together and work on that super-secret project we've been planning involving you-know-who's you-know-what's._

_PS, have you heard from Viktor?_

_PSS, if this doesn't make sense to you, just forget everything you've read. I'm completely sane._

Sincerely, Hermione.

No, no, a thousand times no. She was going to have to make contact in person.

Iris eventually settled on taking their financial situation as her secondary project. Her father was financing their school and lifestyle, but that didn't leave the twins with much for fun. She considered a few things- she had the idea of investing their free money into companies that she knew would do well, but that wasn't a working solution. First of all, it would be massively dishonest. Secondly, it was only a long-term solution and wouldn't do her much good in the next few years. Most importantly, it wasn't very exciting. No. She was going to become an epic cat burglar, because screw those pureblood snotbags. The real question was accomplices- did she want to leave Lily completely ignorant, or train her up so that she could help? That was a question for another day, perhaps. Lily certainly wouldn't be skilled enough to manage it over this summer, regardless.

Seeing their father was strange. He was obviously uncomfortable meeting with them, although she didn't know if that was because they frightened him or because he was ashamed of what he was doing. Nonetheless, he signed the emancipation papers, endured a polite but strained conversation about the school year before high-tailing it the hell out of the restaurant.

The girls ended up wandering around London for a while-they first went to the Ministry to file their paperwork, of course. They raided a few bookstores (both magical and muggle) and ended up tottering home with bags so full of shrunken books that they were still unwieldy. There, they did their first legal adult magic by transfiguring the rather unsuitable bookcases into much larger cases in a literal rainbow of colors that lined all four walls in the front room. Lily had only needed to take an hour to alphabetize her mostly magical purchases, but Iris had a huge selection of classical literature and advanced texts that the girls would be able to appreciate more in a few years.

Changing the flat made it seem cheerier and more like home, so the girls went to town on it. Iris transfigured the wooden floor into marbled blue glass, and the walls became green with black flowers. Lily couldn't manage that kind of magic, but she did color-change their cushions and upholstery from Petunia's tasteful crème selections to something more suiting their age and maturity. The end result looked like something that should inspire Lisa Frank art supplies.

By the time they were done, it looked like a rabid pack of color blind bibliophile hippies had exploded over their flat and the ensuing carnage had been coated in a protective shell of modpodge and sparkles to serve as a lesson to future generations. They were quite proud of themselves, but left the other rooms mostly alone.


	8. Home Alone

The twins sent off letters to both their friends on the second day of summer. Severus replied on the same day, obviously morose about his summer prospects. His family had no plans to go anywhere, and the girls' apartment was a bit too far away to walk to often. Not that it mattered- they wouldn't invite him over anyways. They'd have to explain why they weren't living with their parents anymore, and it was too painful to speak of.

Their only frequent companion was Petunia, who was doing occasional work at a coffee shop over the summer. Remus didn't reply for two weeks, by which time the girls were almost ready to leave on their little vacation. He apparently couldn't come over to play either. His parents seemed to be rather strict.

Iris was still mentally composing her reply letter when the girls took hold of their transcontinental portkey and lurched off of England's soil. It may not be shocking news, strictly speaking, but Bulgaria is unreasonably cold at times. Lily was certainly questioning Iris's wisdom in taking off for a locale about as pleasant as Hogwarts in winter when it was in fact summer break. Iris had attempted to placate her with platitudes about how pretty the snow was and the Quidditch game they would be seeing (Lily was somewhat of a fan) but she had ended up having to promise to go snowboarding and skiing. That was going to be a new experience all around, as neither the Evans family or the Granger family had ever done anything so frivolous (and the Dursleys were hardly worth mentioning when the topic was vacations).

Lily had initially thought that the idea was preposterous- who would rent a room to minors, much less allow them to travel alone? She underestimated the value of money, Iris thought, but as of now she didn't have enough to throw around to go that route. Instead, the girls had begged Petunia to come with them. Iris was ashamed to say that asking Petunia wasn't her first idea. She'd originally wanted to try using aging potions.

It was a wonderful spot of luck that Lily was actually a talented brewer, because Iris had been skating by on the fact that she'd brewed all the potions in the curriculum before. Aging potions were certainly not in the curriculum, although the Weasley twins had proven to even Hermione's satisfaction that students could safely make them (just not plot to use them to circumspect Dumbledore's spells).

In any case, Iris had botched her first cauldron rather spectacularly and had needed Lily's assistance to get the following ones right. They were hoping to stock up- potions had a very long shelf life, and they didn't see the point in making potions whenever they needed them if they could just get it done beforehand. Iris would have liked to make more potions.

However, the aging potions that Lily whipped up weren't powerful enough for the two to pass for adults. Fifteen year-olds traveling alone was less alarming than unaccompanied twelve year-olds, but it still wasn't a good solution. Iris was a little bummed that her awesome idea wouldn't pan out, but at least the girls would be able to travel without fear of being reported as unaccompanied minors. She sheepishly realized that their plan wouldn't have worked even if they'd managed to age enough- they'd need corresponding identification papers to travel internationally, even in the wizarding world.

Perhaps they could travel unassisted next year. She'd need to look into what identification was standard and how it looked.

The transportation issue was easier to resolve. The Department of magical transportation charged a rather nominal fee to set up a multi-destination portkey, but they didn't seem to think they should logically charge more for lots of destinations and an activation life lasting a year. They were strangely nice people (for a Ministry department) with horrible business sense. Petunia was most definitely not a fan of magical transportation, but she was willing to go along with it to avoid the expense of airport transit.

The portkey had taken them directly to a surprisingly spacious wizarding district where they slipped into their hotel and immediately collapsed on the bed they would be sharing, while a frighteningly wan Petunia went to take a hot bath. They heard the hot water running and a rather loud "oh thank god that's over". Iris smiled into her pillow. This Petunia was a far cry from the bitter hag Harry had known. Apparently, all she needed was to feel she was needed to protect and care for her little sister.

"Hey, Iris."

She rolled over on her side to see her sister staring at the ceiling. "Yeah?"

"I'm glad I have you. Sometimes I feel like the world is changing too fast. But we'll always be friends. Promise me you won't decide someone else is your best friend? Sometimes I wish we spent more time together in school."

Iris frowned. "We're together pretty much always, Lily. What are you talking about?"

"well… I dunno. Sometimes I worry that you like Remus more. But that's not fair, because I like him alright and I really like hanging out with Sev."

Iris closed her eyes. For some reason, Lily never really seemed this vulnerable. But that didn't make sense, did it? She was actually only twelve. Of course she had fears about being abandoned and discarded. For the first time, Iris blamed their father for being more afraid of the Ministry than he was determined to be paternal. "Of course I like you most, Lily. Remus is my alternate best friend, for when you have to do important things. Plus he's _**cuuute**_." The smile that accompanied this statement was more predatory than endearing, a thing of teeth and wickedness. Remus certainly was cute now, but he was going to be a total hunk in a couple of years.

"Eww, gross! He's not a boy-boy, he's Remus!" a hotel pillow came winging from the other bed, nearly missing Iris. Clearly, Lily didn't agree yet.

With a grin, Iris taunted "Oh yeah? Methinks the lady doth protest too much! Do YOU have a crush on him? I'll fight you for him. No, actually, I'll start planning the wedding. I think your colors will be orange and pink." At that point, she had to leap to her feet and begin darting around the hotel room to avoid Lily, who was both bright red and grinning. "Lily and Remus sitting in a tree, R-E-A-D-I-N-G! Severus can be your Maid of Honor! Petunia will walk you down the aisle in a tuxedo!"

Section Break

As promised, Iris and Lily gave skiing a try. Neither of them was going to be winning any races in the snow any time soon, but the lack of maimings was enough for Iris to label the venture a success. Petunia was actually rather good at it, but she was also older and in better shape. Iris realized with a grimace that she'd failed to work out over the school year. The twins were both svelte, but a life where the most active part of their daily routine was carrying books upstairs hadn't helped to maintain muscle mass or cardio health. Really, the only thing that had done for them was give them calves of steel.

Introducing Petunia to the good parts of the magical world was fun. It was easier for her to enjoy foreign magic, seeing as her main problem was with Britain's legally enforced cruelty and ineptitude. She was a particular fan of the warming charms that made skiing much more pleasant than it would normally be. Petunia categorically refused to try floo transport, but she was very interested in brooms.

The twins used that interest to wheedle her into agreeing to see professional flyers. Iris was nervous about how Petunia would deal with the minor league Quidditch game they were going to see, as professional flyers could be stomach-turningly reckless, but they just had to go. There was a shockingly young player named Krum on the team. Iris wasn't sure how she would get to talk to him alone-perhaps she could play at the starstruck fan routine and pretend to have a crush on him to get him alone? The idea was a little distasteful, but it might be her best option even if it made her feel like an empty-headed cream puff. He was only two years older than her, from what she understood.

The game was surprisingly busy for such a minor league performance. It turned out that they needed have worried about Petunia's reaction to the dangerous nature of the game. She was on the edge of her seat hollering at the beaters, alternately encouraging them and berating them for substandard performance. Lily was a little wide-eyed when she stared at her oldest sister. She'd never seemed particularly blood thirsty before today.

Petunia was spectacularly unimpressed by the seekers, which was a shame because Viktor was absolutely brilliant. Iris was sure it was him- he'd always been a strange juxtaposition of grace and jerky efficiency on a broom. The thought was a bit of a surprise- that hadn't been Hermione's observation, that was definitely Harry's thought. She couldn't help but smirk. Of course Quidditch would bring out that part of her personality. Poor Harry must be bored to pieces during the school year. Apparently, there weren't flying lessons in the seventies, and she had never gone flying. Next year, she silently promised.

Petunia was hoarse by the time the game ended when Viktor's team won with a rather embarrassing margin (despite a lot of Beater penalties).

Iris hadn't expected anything different- Viktor did have years more experience than the people he was playing against. She suddenly wondered how she would be on a broom- Hermione had been frightened, but she didn't think she would be. That didn't necessarily mean she'd inherited Harry's innate skill, but she resolved to look into the possibility later.

The stands were quickly emptying, but Iris stayed seated. Lily gave her a questioning look, and she responded by pointing to the team currently flying victory laps. "I think they're going to be here a little longer. I'd like to talk to the team and congratulate them." She smiled beatifically up at her older sister. "Mr. Krum was really good, wasn't he? Did you see how old he is? He's basically my age. Isn't that so cool?"

Petunia looked down with a wily smile, clearly taking the bait. She primly smoothed her skirt and re-crossed her legs. "That's fine, Iris. I think that's very sweet of you. No pouting, Lily."

Lily sat back down with a huff. "I wanted to go get dinner" she mumbled. "I'm hungry." Iris stifled a grin. Sometimes, Lily reminded her of Ron and his voracious appetite. Perhaps unreasonably fast metabolisms were connected to red hair.

By that point, the stands were nearly empty and the constant pops of apparition were trickling down. It only took about ten more minutes until they were the only non-team members around. Said team was finishing up their laps and floating down to stretch on the grass. Lily fidgeted on the bench beside her, clearly shivering from the cold. She was huddling into her sisters for warmth when they heard the faint sounds of conversation coming from the team and saw one of the flyers jerk a thumb in their direction.

One of the beaters turned her head to look at them and nodded in their direction. She mounted her broom, whipped over and smiled jauntily at the little girls. She rattled something off in Bulgarian, but none of the Evans sisters understood it. Lily hesitantly said "hello?" The beater quickly switched to English. "Is there something you needed, ladies?" Iris was a bit surprised at her nearly unaccented English.

Lily stared wide-eyed. "Um, you see…." She trailed off. Petunia took over with an indulgent smile. "Sorry, they're a little shy. The girls were really hoping to congratulate the team." Her tone lowered in a faux-conspiratorial manner when she added that "Apparently, they desperately need to meet your hunky seeker."

The woman snorted at that. "Ah, that. Yes, Krum's a cutie, isn't he sweethearts? I'll send him right over. Thanks for your congratulations, ladies."

Utterly mortified, Iris hissed "Petunia!" as soon as the woman was zipping back down to the field. She'd known that Petunia would come to the conclusion that she had a crush, but that didn't mean she wasn't embarrassed. Her sister looked completely unrepentant, but dutifully covered her mouth and turned her face to the side to hide her smirk. Lily wasn't any better- she was outright giggling. "Traitors" she mumbled crabbily.

Down on the pitch, the team broke out into laughter. Iris cringed when the burly keeper slapped Viktor on the back. He looked about as pleased as she felt when he got to his feet and went over to make nice with the fans. Inwardly, she found that amusing. He was probably thinking that this was the dreaded day when fan girls would learn about him in the 70s and make his life hell. He had always despised his audience, or at least the giggly girls in it who were looking to hook a famous boyfriend. It only took him a moment to land in front of them, and her breath caught in her throat. Oh, my… He _should_ worry. He was much cuter in this lifetime than he had been in the last. Hermione felt a bit guilty at that thought- but it was totally true. Hermione had been fond of his personality more so than his face.

"Hello" he started gruffly. "Thank you for coming to the game. You vanted to speak with me?"

Her heart was still halfway up her throat when she croaked out "Um hi! I really wanted to meet you. I'm Iris Evans, and these are my sister Lily and Petunia. You're… Viktor- I mean, Ivar Krum, right? I've wanted to meet you since I first heard about your flying. Youngest player in the league, right?" He certainly wasn't the youngest player in this league like he had been in their last life, but Lily and Petunia wouldn't know that. Hopefully, he would catch on.

He looked at her sharply. "You are well informed." He took her hand and gently kissed the back of it. "Charmed to meet you. From your accent, I take it you are from Hogwarts?"

She allowed herself to grin. "Yes! We're going into our second year there. You go to Durmstrang, right? What's it like there? I've read so much about it! Is it true that the school itself moves every year?" Playing the overly excitable bibliophile was rather fun sometimes, she mused. He'd definitely caught on, although he probably thought she was just Hermione.

"It's fine" he said shortly. "I haff to go continue our cool down. If you wish to continue this conversation, you may send me an owl." It almost looked like he wanted to smile at her, but his face was just so stubbornly grumpy that he didn't manage it. As he rejoined his teammates, Petunia dryly remarked, "Well, he's friendly. I think he's practically your boyfriend now, Iris." Lily impatiently tugged at her sleeves. "Let's go already! There is food with my name on it in the hotel restaurant."

The rest of their vacation went uneventfully, and the girls had to go back to England for Petunia to get ready for her first term of University. Their summer was spent lazily reading at the local pool, with Lily slathered in copious amounts of sun lotion to keep her pale complexion. Iris teased her for it, but Lily got the final laugh when Iris ended up red as a hydrant after their third pool visit. She sulkily lotioned up the rest of the summer. Severus never met them at the pool, but he would agree to meet up with them at the old park for lunches and conversation.

Iris found herself missing Remus- he was much closer to her mental age than the other two, and Lily and Sev tended to be a little bit clique-ish. She treasured his letters when she got them, but they were both short and worryingly infrequent. He never said anything of substance, but she found herself wondering what his home situation was like. Remus had crushing self-esteem issues. His disease could account for a lot of that, but there could be more to it. Guiltily, she noted that she knew almost nothing about his background, except that he avoided speaking about it.

She bit her lip and promised that she would be a better friend and push for answers when they got back to school. Perhaps she should "discover" his condition soon, so that he could know she supported him unreservedly? Harry peeped up in the back of her mind- wasn't second year when the Marauders discovered his condition, and began working on the Animagus transformation in their third? It was almost inevitable that they would catch on, seeing as they were his dorm mates.

She felt sick to her stomach with nervousness. What if her friendship was why he was alienated from his peers? What if they chose not to support him this time around? It would completely crush him.

Her correspondence with Viktor had gone much better. She'd declined to explain the complexity of her situation, as she wasn't excited about the idea of there being physical proof of her situation. He was under the impression that she was just Hermione. He hadn't heard from Fleur either, but agreed to try to contact her. He was doing well. Aside from his competitive flying, he was on an athletic scholarship to Durmstrang and speeding through the curriculum. Just the thought made her wistful. She was so totally going to get a hold of a broom this school year.


	9. Duchy McGonagall

Thank you for all the lovely reviews! Reading them gives me a happy.

Iris slumped over in the train compartment seat bonelessly while Lily spelled their trunks to float to the above-head compartments. Lily then sat across from her, rubbing her eyes. They'd stayed up rather late, getting rid of perishable items and getting their apartment ready to be deserted for the bulk of a year. It was funny how much more complicated things were when they lived on their own.

Lily idly shuffled a pack of cards while Iris pulled a shrunken book out of her bag and flipped it open to her chapter. It was a play-by-play account of championship duels in the late sixteenth century. Lily found it to be incredibly dry, boring stuff, but Iris was interested in seeing the spells that had since gone out of style and reading about strategy. Some of those bastards were really funny- Like Hilda Cheese, who defeated Alastair the Undefeated (apparently his title was given a bit prematurely) by starching his robes so thoroughly that he was incapable of movement. She then proceeded to roll him over and use him as a footstool so that she could comfortably work on her stitching until the time ran out. She liked to imagine that while this was happening the crowd was awkwardly shuffling their feet, presumably looking at their sundials and mentally composing grocery lists.

Severus flounced in a few minutes later. Iris pressed her lips together tightly and looked at her sister, who was also obviously working to avoid a snicker.

Dear Sev just didn't seem aware of how pouty and sweet he looked when he glowered and prowled. Iris knew that he'd grow into his aggressive body language, but she somehow hoped he wouldn't. He was stinking adorable.

Fabric rustled as Sev settled next to Lily, obstinately leaving his trunk out. It was probably for the exclusive purpose of being contrary. Severus and Lily seemed to enjoy bickering. At least, Sev did. Lily might not realize that he was winding her up. She was awful cute when she got all red and indignant.

Iris frowned when she noted that Severus was already in his robes somehow. Iris idly wondered if he had walked through the train station like that. It would be so like him to do that in order to avoid changing on the train. She heroically avoided a snort. He was strangely shy about changing in front of the girls, even though he barely had to disrobe to get into uniform. "Severus!" Lily scolded. "Put your trunk up. It's in the way."

"Were you perhaps planning to take a nap on the compartment floor?" he snarked. "It looks like a respectable foot rest to me." He then demonstrated his point by thumping his dirty boots on top of his luggage. Lily grimaced as mud flaked off. Iris wondered if Hilda Cheese had dirty feet. She might well have- the book didn't specify, but it sure seemed like she'd went into that fight with a grudge and the intention of humiliating her opponent.

Iris tuned them out, choosing to flip through her books. Once she was done with this light reading, she needed to start on her text books. She barely needed to, but occasionally she came across a change in curriculum since her time. Her defense texts were generally much more useful than Hermione had gotten. This was excellent, as her dueling repertoire was shamefully small even with Harry's knowledge added. Of course, second year texts weren't going to be very useful for that. She made a mental note to look up higher level texts and perhaps start to play at dueling with her friends to train them up a bit.

The door slid open and Sirius Black poked his head in. Lily looked over, abruptly abandoning her conversation with Sev. Black grinned at them from behind the hair hanging down over his face. "Alright there, Evanses, Ravenclaw?" He glanced at her book. "Oh, what are you reading?" Iris handed it to him, and he flipped it over to look at the back jacket. Still reading, he distractedly continued "I'm looking for James-boy. Seen him?"

The disinterest was almost palpable when Severus raised his head and intoned "No. Now go away."

Iris stifled a giggle at Sirius's affronted expression. He looked rather like an offended cat, all puffed up and indignant. She smoothed things over with a hasty "He's right, we haven't seen Potter. If we do see your gentleman love, I'll be sure to let him know you're looking for him. Unless of course you plan on sitting with is. If that's the case, snuggle on up to Severus. He's really quite friendly."

The Ravenclaw outright hissed at that, scrambling for something to toss at her. He only came up with a fistful of the brightly colored candies Lily had packed. Iris shielded her face with her book, and tossed a sneaky wink at Sirius. "Isn't he the friendliest little Ravenclaw you've ever seen?" she cooed in mock seriousness. A chocolate in purple foil connected with her forehead and bounced down into her lap at that point. She held her head up high and unwrapped it, then offered it to the interloper. He stuffed it in his face almost as an afterthought.

"Thanks, Evans, but I'll take my chances on the other compartments. James might already be on here somewhere. Besides, I'd hate to impose upon your friend's sunny disposition. Be downright rude, that would." Lily grimaced at the fact that he was talking around the candy, and didn't bother to wave when he left the compartment.

"Oh, crap." Iris remembered, thunking her head back against the seat. "Black wandered off with my book." Lily blinked at her. "Well, he can't be very far away. Why don't you track him down?" Iris shook her head. If he's out of the compartment, he is too far away for me to hunt down. You see, I can't go anywhere. Because my leg itches. It's debilitating, really. I'll see him at the castle. I will accost him then."

Severus gave a crooked smile at that, clearly choosing to overlook her persistent weirdness and shameful laziness. "Accost, you say? A worthy goal".

It was a good ten minutes before Remus arrived, huffing and puffing. Calmly, Iris handed him a candy. "Been going after the little piggies?" He looked at her with obvious confusion on his features. "No? Is that not a thing in the wizarding world? There's this muggle story about a big bad wolf who huffs and puffs and blows down a bunch of pig's houses in order to eat them. I've always been partial to the poor wolf. A silly pig who builds his house out of straw probably should be eaten for the good of the gene pool."

She could have smacked her forehead when he paled and began to fidget. Of course he wouldn't like that bit of trivia. Clearly uncomfortable, Remus hedged "No, no piggies. I was hurrying is all. I saw someone in the hall that I didn't want to talk to."

"Ah, I see. Makes perfect sense." She levitated his trunk onto the racks above their heads. "I demand that you cuddle me now. I'm rather cold. I will probably explode if you do not give me your body heat right now."

Severus frowned. "Lack of heat doesn't cause explosions. Does it?" he murmured.

"Irrelevant!" Iris snapped hastily. "Do not question the man behind the curtain. Hand over my snuggles, stat." The only blonde in the compartment complied with a wry grin. "Should I be hurt that you are only using me for my body?" He dryly inquired. She wiggled into a comfortable position and ruffled his hair. She airily declared "Nonsense. I'm also using you for your mind and for an alibi later."

She took the candy she'd handed him back from his hands, unwrapped it and shoved it in his mouth. He sputtered a bit before obediently chewing. "You are obviously dangerously low on sugar, Remus darling. We need to get your blood levels properly flooded, as soon as possible. Otherwise I might feel bad about my diet in comparison." With that, she scooted away on the seat, took her arms from around his torso and wiggled onto her side. She ended with her head half into his lap with her nose sticking into his tummy.

"That tickles, Iris" he commented. She intentionally breathed harder in lieu of a reply, fluttering the fabric of his shirt. "You are contrary as a cat" he breathed with an air of amusement. She didn't verbally reply to this statement either. Iris closed her eyes and inhaled his scent, enjoying the warmth she was pirating from her boy. Drowsily, she informed him "you are my very favorite furnace, love. I missed this." She felt his hand settle in her hair and heard Lily giggle on the other bench.

She didn't care that it was abnormal for kids their age to be so touchy-feely. Remus was clearly deprived of touch, and she enjoyed providing it. He no longer winced away from her the way he had at the beginning of first year.

The train started with a joint. Lily was unprepared for the shock, standing in order to wiggle something out of her trunk. She hit her head with a nasty-sounding clang. "Ow!". Severus looked unduly alarmed. She plopped down onto the seat, holding her hand to her head and forcing tears back.

"Let me see that", Sev tried, prying her hand away. "You've scratched your forehead up on the lock or something. See, you're going to get blood in your hair and clothes like that. Let's go clean you up".

Lily sniffled out "okay." She put her hand back over her cut and allowed Severus to lead her out of the compartment by her arm. "Make sure he doesn't forget to him kiss it better, Lils!" Iris called. Severus slammed the door in response.

Her body pillow snickered. "Charming. Actually, I'd like to make a run to the loo. Can you let me up?" She sat up with a sigh, resentfully narrowing her eyes at him. "Oh come on, I'll be right back."

Soon she was alone in the compartment. She must have drifted off for a few minutes, because the next thing she knew, she was hearing loud voices in the hall. Actually, it was one voice- she recognized it as James Potter.

Uneasily, she stood up and approached the door, where the conversation became much clearer.

"…the matter, Loopy? Have your friends finally realized how bonkers you are?" Something clawed its way up Iris's chest, and her breathing became heavy. "What, nothing to say? Why'd you even bother to come back?"

"Y-yeah!" another voice chimed in. "No one wants you in our dorm, bookworm. You're so weird." There was a thud in the hall.

Iris saw red. She slammed the compartment door open and stepped into the hall. James' back was to her, watching Peter snicker at Remus. Her friend was on the floor against the far wall between the other two boys, clearly trying to pretend the other Gryffindors weren't there. She drew her wand. "Mundis luto!" she barked out. The spell hit Peter, and he began to cough and sputter.

James whipped around to face her, but paused when he saw who was throwing hexes. The chivalrous impulse earned him an identical cleaning charm to the face. Remus blinked up at her as both his tormentors hacked until their eyes began to bulge. "Alright there?" she asked, not even bothering to keep her wand trained on her fellow Gryffindors. She slipped in inside her pocket and strode over to take Remus's hand. He was shaking and pale when she helped him up, clearly humiliated. He'd been hiding this bullying from her for an entire year?

"What's this, then?"

Iris turned to the voice. "Good news, Black. I found Potter. I even laundered him for you, because I know how you dislike the stink of feces. His mouth was awful dirty from spewing hateful shite. You might want to look into that. It was my impression that basic human decency included not ganging up on and bullying your peers. I mean, I could be wrong, but I thought that it was generally considered rude and cowardly to start a two-on-one fight with a person who doesn't want to fight at all."

She slid their door open and gestured for Remus to go first. She looked back at James. "Although if you really want a two-on-one fight, I will _gladly_ kick your sorry arses three times a day for the rest of our school career if you're too thick to leave my friend alone. So bugger off." She stepped into her compartment, but Sirius's hand caught the door.

"Uh… Hey, wait Evans! I was bringing back your book". She primly took it and tucked it close to her chest. "Thank you. Much obliged." Then she slid the door shut behind her and tossed it onto the seat, attacking Remus with a fierce hug. They didn't say a word the whole trip, not even when the other two returned and looked at them strangely for snuggling on the seats.

Section Break

Iris waited impatiently at the table. The Sorting ceremony had lost since lost its novelty, especially since she recognized very few of the names called. She was a bit amused to hear a Longbottom called up, and unsurprised when he made his way over to the Gryffindor table. She made a point of shaking his hand when he sat a few seats down from her. She did notice for the first time that Narcissa Malfoy (she would always be a Malfoy to Iris) was at the Slytherin table, along with a brunette who looked remarkable like her. Tonks' mum, perhaps?

To her right, Remus poked morosely at his salad. She readjusted closer to him, so that she could feel his body heat even through her robes. He stiffened. Iris pretended not to notice, and took the liberty of putting a piece of cake onto his plate. He looked at her, eyes clearly expressing confusion. She smiled, palmed the three cherry tomatoes on top of his salad, and nonchalantly tossed them behind her without a pause. Wide-eyed, he turned around to see them pelt some poor Hufflepuff in the back. "Hey!" He turned around quickly, not wanting to get blamed for the flying fruit.

"You need calories." Iris informed. "You're so thin. I worry that you're going to shrivel up, and I'll have to socialize with other human beings. If you do that to me, I will raise you as an Inferi and make you spend eternity watching me eat chocolate while you soak in your own filth and sadness." He ate the cake without complaint.

That night, Iris asked Remus to go for a walk with her. They wound up in the Room of Requirement- most of their walks ended there- which turned into a cavernous room full of decades of accumulated junk and treasures. "Huh" Remus raised his head to scan over the room. "I was thinking about exploring. I guess this would be a good place to explore."

"Well, then lead on Miss Croft." Iris gestured grandly in front. Remus shot her a rather confused look, but started poking along the wavering path without comment. "I wanted to talk to you about what happened on the train. Are your dorm mates usually like that?" she asked softly.

The boy paused, and trailed his fingers along the surface of a desk. "They think I'm weird." He offered. "They say I read too much and I'm not fun and that I suck up to the teachers to make them look bad. At first they just ignored me, but I think they decided it would be more enjoyable to push me around." He shrugged. "Classic pack behavior".

Iris snorted. "Being part of a pack implies animal intelligence, which seems to be overestimating them. Potter is spoiled rotten and can't get the idea that people can be different without being wrong through his thick skull. I think Pettigrew wants to be one of the cool kids badly enough that he doesn't care about hurting feelings. and Black … I don't know what his deal is, actually". She shrugged artlessly. "He's harder to get a read on. I know he hates the Slytherins, but I think that's because his family pushed their values too much."

"Well, he actually isn't too bad to me. I don't think he wants to talk to me, but he never makes fun of me." He paused. "He never sticks up for me, though."

Iris scowled. "Well, bugger him, then. Because he's blind or crazy. You're not weird at all. You're made of awesome."

He laughed. "I'm glad you think so. Wish you were my dorm mate instead." He blushed. "Wait, I didn't mean that. You're a girl." He froze, and then awkwardly backtracked from that as well. "I mean, of course you're a girl, that's obvious. And there's nothing wrong with girls. I'm sure you're a great dorm mate to other girls and you would be a great dorm mate to guys… I'm just going to stop talking now."

She poked him in the side. "I knew what you meant, but I did appreciate the way you kept digging that hole deeper and deeper. You know, some of this stuff is pretty weird." She picked up what appeared to be an early model of a muggle vacuum cleaner. "I mean, who ever thought to bring this here? What good would it do? Was this how they found out muggle electronics won't work on campus? Man, wouldn't that be embarrassing?"

Remus laughed. "What is that thing?"

She looked askance at him. "I thought you had a muggleborn mum?" He shrugged. "Raised entirely wizard, then? Shame. You're missing out on quite a lot." She explained the function of a vacuum as best as she could, but he seemed to find the concept more funny than anything. They also discovered a shiny record player, a bag of old-fashioned joke products that weakly flashed the message "This product was stolen from Bogrod's" in swoopy red letters, and a cheap-looking bust of a man with a rusty tiara on top. They had a giggle about that one, and considered transfiguring the bust into Professor McGonagall. She'd look awful nice in a pretty princess dress to match the jewelry, after all. In the end, they couldn't get it to be a very good likeness, so they helpfully labeled it "An Ode to Grand Duchy of Transfiguration Minerva McGonagall, 1972" on a shiny placard the professor dummy was obliged to hold.


	10. Symmetry

After dinner one Friday while her year mates were playing board games and showing off the brooms they had been allowed to bring for the first time, Iris wondered if it counted as some sort of symmetry that her second year was the one where the Chamber of Secrets opened up, both now and in her first life.

Granted, she was not planning on using the Basilisk to attack anyone (and if she did, she would not be nearly as ineffectual as the possessed Ginny. Honestly, given a poisonous fifty foot snake, there should have been blood, even without the added bonus of the stone-gaze.) _Oh, that is not the thing to be thinking about now_. She swallowed nervously, feeling her throat tighten and suddenly feeling suffocated by the lingering taste of her cinnamon dessert. _This is ridiculous, I'll be fine. The Basilisk doesn't come out unless it is called, and even if it did I can close my eyes and talk to it._ Still, she was nervous.

Lily had not been particularly hard to ditch, which made her feel almost sad. As soon as they got back to school her closest friend was Severus once again. It was just as well. If Lily had been waiting for her to come back to the dorms, she would probably wonder what was happening if Iris disappeared into the toilet for an hour. Perhaps she could be convinced that the vegetable salad had given her explosive diarrhea? Iris snorted. That would end conversation pretty quickly.

Remus, on the other hand… he had seemed a little hurt and confused that she wanted to go for a long walk by herself. He'd been planning to spend the day together, apparently. She felt a little guilty about leaving him alone a mere two days before the full moon, but she had to get this done, and she didn't have many opportunities to slip away for the majority of the day. She hadn't offered any explanation to him as to what she was doing, but she'd need to figure something out soon. She couldn't disappear without an alibi very often.

Cold fingers traced the scratched snake on the underside of the third sink, then she pressed them tighter. She closed her eyes, and pictured a great serpent coiling around her, sweeping the floor with its tail and raising up to look into her eyes. 'Open'.

With a jerk, stone ground and the sink she was gripping pulled out of her hand. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or not- she couldn't even tell that she had been speaking a different language, but she must have. As she watched, the cluster of sinks slowly rotated and folded away from a foul-smelling pit in the center of the room. She grimaced. 'That is foul.' She tucked her wand into her sleeve and then held her arm against her body to protect it, covered her nose with her other hand, and then took a leap of faith.

She felt oddly like a child at the top of a water slide, but the bizarre comparison fled her mind as her stomach leapt up and out of her body when the rest of her plummeted straight down for what felt like an incredibly long time to hold her breath. Why was she holding her breath? This wasn't water, it was air, thick and damp but air. She forced an inhalation-and scraped her elbow painfully when the chute leveled out to a much less steep fall. A heartbeat later, her knees were on fire from the shock of the impact of her feet on the ground, and she fell to the wet stone in the darkness.

'There has got to be more than one way in and out of this shithole. There just has to be.' She laid there for a moment, indulging in her pain. Gradually, the numbness fled her limbs and cold seeped in. When she got to her feet again, she decided that tonight absolutely had to be the night that she found another way out of the Chamber. After all, Riddle almost certainly would not have tolerated getting black mold and shed skin on his robes whenever he fancied a jaunt to the Chamber. If he'd gone down multiple times, it wasn't the way that she just had. She grimaced and attempted to brush the dirt off her pants.

Light would help… she conjured up a series of floating lights, and directed them to stay put at intervals along the walls. Avoiding the main chamber for now, she explored in the narrower tunnels. They seemed to crawl around the main area, and link back in from behind the statues. At one point, she located the recessed area where Harry had thrown a stone to distract the deaf snake when he got backed into a corner. It actually looked a little like it had caved in- that tunnel had gone somewhere else before.

Hit by sudden inspiration, she circled back around to the symmetrical point on the other side of the chamber. A close examination revealed a passageway hidden in the darkness, just large enough for a relatively svelte adult to slip through sideways. As a twelve year old, she found it rather easy to walk down.

It widened to a more comfortable size after twenty feet or so, but it also began to tilt upwards. Climbing the stairs wasn't enough preparation for walking this steep incline for so long. When her chest burned, she stopped and rested against the wall for a while. She took a deep breath, trying to modulate her breathing. Then she took another quick breath- and enjoyed the scent of grass and trees. Stumbling to her feet, she began to run and burst out into the sunlight. She laughed, and spun around-and was absolutely shocked to realize that she couldn't see the passageway she had just stepped out of. Tentatively, she pushed her hand through what appeared to be a tree, then stepped all the way through. _This is amazing… I can't tell that I'm near the end of the tunnel from either side_.

She stepped back outside, and tried to gain her bearings. She was clearly somewhere in the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, but she didn't see the castle or the grounds. Idly wondering if this was deeper in the forest when Salazar had built the passageway, she meandered along the edge of the tree line. Her breath caught when she realized- she was in the trees surrounding the shrieking shack! That meant she was on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Well. It wasn't as if she was lacking for ways to sneak out, but this one would lead her back to a place no one would see her emerge. That was useful, she supposed. And the boys were highly unlikely to discover this route. She quirked a smile.

Since she was already out of the castle, she took the opportunity to browse the bookstore. The man behind the counter gave her a bemused stare, but didn't confront her about the fact that she should be in classes. _They probably see a lot of kids sneak out…. But probably not ones as young as me. I should get Gurdyroot… If I'm going to do this, or even go all the way to Diagon Alley, I should have some aging potion. I'm too conspicuous as is. _She considered what she actually needed, and then tried to narrow it down further to what books she could afford to have people know she had.

She didn't really expect that the teachers would remain completely ignorant of her purchases here today- they might, but she couldn't count on it. The best way to hide secrets was to let people think that they knew your secrets. She needed texts that would have spells she could use in combat against death eaters, to destroy horcruxes (she was hoping to avoid fiendfyre) and she needed background information.

Buying advanced spell books was completely out of the question, unless they seemed completely innocuous like texts full of beauty spells or household charms. She could perhaps find inspiration for spells to develop in stories like the ones about the deathly hallows. Finding out what the wizarding world considered impossible would be a good way to investigate lost spells and make a list of things she should invent to shock and awe opponents. With that in mind, she could probably pursue her need for interesting spells by reading fairy tales and other stories.

She was more conflicted when it came to thinking about accessing information about how the wizarding world was structured and was run. She first thought she might be able to safely access books about history, but that could less conspicuously be accomplished in the Hogwarts library. She was portraying herself as a prodigy, yes, but that didn't mean people would take her working so far above her level in stride. It was best to be underestimated. What she did know about the wizarding world made her blood boil- it was regressive, and essentially run by whoever had the most money to throw around. She ended up leaving with several collections of fairy tales, an encyclopedia of mythological names, and a fictional series about a wizard who explored old tombs for riches.

Course decided, she picked her way to the Apothecary and bought everything she would need, along with quite a few other things so that her intention was not too  
obvious. None of the ingredients were particularly rare, so the subterfuge might not have been necessary. No one ever died from being too careful, though. After that, she explored a supplies store that hadn't been there when she went to school. It was mostly far out of her budget- which might explain why it didn't stay in business in a strip that largely catered to teachers and school children- but in it, she found inspiration. She subtly checked the price on the heavy silver Pensieve.

It was too expensive for her to take now, but she absolutely needed it. After all, if thinking was what made someone human, then the contents of Harry's memories and thought processes was the summation of his being. If she transferred them all to a pensieve, it would be much easier to 'import' them into a new body for him. Of course, she'd have to find him some sort of identity, but that problem was infinitely preferable to having him slowly assimilated into her brain. She might experience a sudden personality change without his influences, but it wasn't as if anyone would ever suspect she had one less person in her head when teenage angst was an available assumption.

The next problem was money… but then again, Basilisk venom was very rare. And she had what was essentially a limitless supply back at the castle, assuming the snake would listen to her. If she couldn't control it, she would have to kill it. She would still be able to make quite a bit of money off that, but it wasn't her first option. Would a snake really know she wasn't a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, if she spoke parseltongue and no one had warned it? She thought not. To be safe, she acquired a set of wraparound sunglasses. Aside from making her look like a total badass, they would be useful in her immediate goal of not dying horribly. She went back to the book store, and flipped through a text of cosmetics spells until she found a way to conjure a mirror, which she attached to her lenses, then forced to transparency and shrunk until it was very thin.

She frowned. This wasn't the best solution… If she were turned into a statue in the chamber of secrets, she was rather unlikely to ever be found and saved. She would be effectively dead, really. Which meant… she'd need to have mandrake drought ready, and someone else to help her. Viktor was the natural choice (she still hadn't managed to contact Fleur, and even if she had, Fleur was apparently now two years younger than she was. She'd feel guilty about dragging someone who looked like a nine year old into the basilisk chamber).

Of course, she could get around those problems by ensuring she couldn't see the basilisk at all, or at least not in a conventional way. What about heat vision? No giant, manky snakes would be able to turn her to stone via super-heated eyeballs, so that should be relatively safe. But was there such a spell? _Or did it even have to be a spell? …_ _This might be a time to just acquire muggle heat vision goggles_. The simple solution is often the best, and it'd be easier to get goggles into Hogwarts than it would be to get Viktor into Britain.

She pocketed the sunglasses anyway- they were more protection than she'd had before, in any case. Finding her way back into the tunnel to the chamber was both easier than she'd feared and more complicated than she'd hoped- she nearly twisted her ankle readjusting to the darkness, but got back under the castle relatively quickly. Jogging downhill was much, much easier than trudging uphill. Her only real problem left was how to get back up into the bathroom without Fawkes to carry her…

She stopped dead, and seriously considered face-palming herself. There had to be a way back up, teenage Voldemort never had a phoenix. The tunnel was probably the way it was because he'd last used it for the basilisk, who would have an easier time traversing pipes than stairs. It was probably normally stairs, and simply under a transfiguration to allow the snake to move more easily. After all, Salazar couldn't have predicted just how large the snake would get, (just as he likely hadn't predicted his entrance would be remodeled into a latrine) and therefore couldn't have planned for it.

She didn't need the entrance to be a pipe, since she wasn't planning on letting the snake up. So she didn't have to be able to turn the entrance back and forth, she just needed to overpower the transformation it was under and revert it to whatever it had been before. Granted, she was running the risk that its original form was even less useful than what Voldemort had made it, but at worst she'd cast a lightening spell on herself and make her fingers sticky and climb up. She grimaced. That would be hard work, and she had sad little t-rex arms in the first place. You'd think that carrying books would lead to a stronger physique than it did.

Luckily, it only took her two tries to undo the transfiguration, now that she knew what she was looking for. It turned into a spiral staircase, much like the one that led to the headmaster's office. It also spun in a physics defying way that somehow led to the top despite logic's claim that she should be spinning in place, but she'd rather allow the inconsistency than walk up all the stairs. Did this mean that Salazar was the one who designed the headmaster's office? Actually, there wouldn't have been a headmaster at that point in time, so perhaps his office was simply converted to the headmaster's office sometime after he was gone. The similar design and the paranoia behind requiring a password be given to a stone guardian added some credence to the theory.

In the dorm that night, she cracked open her new books. She'd have plenty of time to read while her classmates labored on essays she could crank out in twenty minutes, but it was still best to get started.


	11. Amateur Hour Philosophy

Chapters are rather shorter than I expected, but I'm separating things out by mood. The story is getting darker than I intended, so hold onto all the hats you have within reach. Or you could attempt to beat me with them if you were hoping for something more light hearted and I could reconsider where I am taking this. I am a fan of less sunshine-y plots, and Iris was always intended to be more than a little unstable, but this doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. Hit me up if you have strong opinions, because it starts going downhill from here on out.

Iris slumped over on the bench. It was Saturday morning and she had the whole day in front of her, but she was still eager to get back to her dorm and read. The task in front of her seemed insurmountable. It was time to get serious about dealing with the threat she'd traveled back to stop, even if it wasn't in the same way she had originally planned. She might well be strong enough to protect herself, but that was looking at a very small picture. She wasn't anywhere near ready to deal with Voldemort himself, of course, or even to fetch his toys. But she could prepare for that and try to figure out what she should do to sabotage him. It would be infinitely easier to deal with him if she took away his resources. Of course, aside from his talent and superior knowledge, his resources were largely people.

Logically speaking, the world would be a much better place without a lot of them in it. But it was still hard to start cold-bloodedly planning to kill them before they'd committed their crimes. As Hermione, she had always been much better at cutting the legs out from under someone who had already posed themselves a threat (like Skeeter, for instance). Harry, on the other hand, had only been able to harm someone in the heat of the moment. She sternly reminded herself that she wasn't really just either one of those people- Hermione Granger had never been born, and might never be if Iris didn't make the world a safer place. She didn't have to hold to either person's morals. She could-she would do whatever she had to in order to minimize the harm Voldemort could do before she could get herself and Harry to the point where they could oppose him.

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

Iris blinked at Remus, confused. "You're trying to put the syrup on your fruit. You already put some in your potatoes." He gestured at her plate. "Did you not sleep well?"

"Oh, right. Yeah, I slept ok. I just wasn't paying much attention. I was thinking about something I read last night". She pushed the syrup away from herself and stabbed into a piece of watermelon. "Did you know that people who live on one of the poles have some really weird reactions when the sun doesn't come out for days on end? There's this thing they have called a Wendigo, which is actually a person who goes kinda crazy without the light and starts cannibalizing people. Yum, right?" She popped the fruit into her mouth and savored it. _Mm, surprisingly fresh and sweet_.

He stared. "This is what you usually think about at breakfast?" She wondered if this was about the time he started considering backing away slowly. He might have, if he hadn't been sitting down on the other side of the table. Perhaps he felt safer with two feet of wood between them?

She swallowed quickly and snickered a little. "Well, sometimes I think about the infinite pluralities of being, but mostly eating people, yes. Actually, the thing I found really interesting is that they don't have any jails up there. They form a council, and when someone goes nuts like that and is a danger to everyone else, they push them off of the ice when none of the kids are looking". She picked at her cantaloupe. "Is that actually any worse than what we do with Azkaban? I mean, obviously I think the muggle idea of treatment for mental illness is more humane, but we don't do anything like that either. We just lock criminals away for life where we don't have to look at them. Dying might be kinder than slowly being eaten by Dementors."

Remus grimaced across the table, and Lily elbowed her. "That's morbid, Iris. Stop being so gross at the table. It can't be as bad as all that. They wouldn't put people in prison who don't deserve it, and being dead is terrible. Of course that's worse than sitting in jail. I can't believe those places really push citizens into the water to freeze and drown."

Joan turned from where she had been marking up Alice's essay. "Actually, it really is that bad. My mum said she'd rather die than go there." She set down her quill. "Not that she's likely to, she works as a liaison for the Aurors. They have to bring suspects past her on the way out to the secured apparition point to the island. It's not pretty. Sometimes they try to escape or kill themselves instead of go. It never works, of course, the Aurors are trained to deal with that."

Lily blanched. Remus rested his elbows on the table and leaned his chin down onto his hands. "What is it the muggles do instead? With mentally ill people, I mean. When someone is ill like that, we usually put them in the hospital. But you can't really do that with people who are dangerous. Of course they have to go in jail."

Iris frowned. "Not true. First of all, everyone has the capacity to be dangerous". She set down her fork."I guess that's a bit off-topic, though. If we are talking about people who are proven to act violently or in other criminal ways as a consequence of mental illness, they can be treated in separate facilities from most people under strict security, and then either released into regular treatment or live under occasional supervision from authorities or actually go to jail and serve their time after they are capable of understanding the repercussions of their actions. Prison doesn't teach anyone how to behave correctly. It's actually a self-defeating system. It makes people depressed and angry to be locked up, of course they haven't learned better decision-making skills when they're stuck in prison without opportunities to improve themselves. If you take away a person's ability to make decisions, that capacity suffers. Prisoners can't even decide when to go take a crap in jail, so how can any intelligent person expect them to learn why what they did was socially unacceptable?"

Alice snickered. "That was quite a mouthful, Iris. Ta!" She set her silver down and left the table to walk with a passing Ravenclaw friend.

"The Wizarding world doesn't have anything like that, or at least we don't in England. Of course, a system of rehabilitation in incarceration doesn't sound anything like the one you first mentioned. I mean, that's a pretty far cry from pushing people off the ice." Remus observed. "Or does that just make sense for people who are untreatable or in a society without the resources to treat them? If so, would you say that we have those resources?"

Lily rolled her eyes. "Come on Joan, let's go work in the library. I don't want to get caught up in this discussion. When the conversation turns to pushing people into the ocean, it's just time to go". As she got up and flounced away, the group to their left suddenly quieted. Iris glanced over to see that James was inordinately interested in watching Lily walk away while Sirius made quiet kissing noises and a grossed-out face. She covered a smile. That obsession started earlier than she expected.

* * *

Iris noticed something rather strange in the next few weeks. It wasn't a particularly bad thing, just strange- but Remus's roommates seemed to be treating him a little differently. Remus ate it up- he was clearly eager to get on good terms with them, even if it meant being their go-to when James or Peter had questions about History of Magic or Potions. Iris was a little disgusted- Remus was the only one of the second year Gryffindor boys who wasn't a pureblood, and he was the only one who seemed to know anything about wizarding history. Well, aside from Sirius, who must have had it shoved down his throat from an early age.

It might be nothing. The boys could just be growing up, or James might be trying to get on better terms with Lily's friends. Remus was a twelve-year old boy, after all, it was certainly more socially acceptable to be close friends with other boys than it was to be attached at the hip to a girl. As unhappy as the thought made her, it was an innocent enough explanation. Of course, the change could also indicate that the other three boys had found of Remus's secret (accidentally or not) and he was doing whatever they wanted because he was grateful they hadn't turned him in.

When he walked right past her in the common room where she usually waited for him to go to breakfast and sat with their group instead one morning, Iris's heart sank. Yeah, they'd found out about his furry secret. She was a little hurt- she'd been his friend when he had no one else. _But_, she thought bitterly, _as far he knew the boys knew him better than anyone else did and accepted him anyways. It must be a dream come true for him_. It wasn't true, of course, she knew his secret and simply didn't care, and the immature boys he was running with were taking advantage of his brains and gratitude. She'd thought he would tell her when he was ready. Apparently that wasn't going to happen. Why risk rejection when he already had friends who didn't care he was toothy and fuzzy occasionally?

He stopped going for walks with her. He didn't sit with her at meals, and he spent his homework time with the boys. Lily noticed somewhat, but she didn't spend much time in the common room when she could instead be with Severus. Iris tried not to care. She was, after all, really an adult twice over and not a lonely twelve-year old girl. _Maybe some friendships were just meant to be_, she mused. Lily was her sort-of twin, but she had been Snape's best friend originally, and Remus had been closest with the Marauders. She was just a stand-in until they got to meet the people they really connected with.

Fine. Fine by her, she needed plenty of time to focus on what was really important anyways. They were bound to drift apart anyways, since she didn't need to spend the time they did on classwork.

She didn't know what Remus saw in them anyways, aside from unconditional acceptance. Sirius was surprisingly intelligent and easy to deal with, considering what she remembered from knowing him as an adult, but James was still a total brat. Her perception might have been skewed by what she remembered of the adults they have become. In particular, her assessment of the adult Sirius may have been very unfair and not reflected his true personality- she'd only known him after he'd spent most of his adult life in prison with happiness-sucking monsters.

But the good things she'd heard about James were not bearing out at all. Sure, he wasn't picking on Remus, but he'd moved on to bullying Slytherin students in the year below them, which pissed Lily off to no end. Iris rather darkly noted that she was going to work to keep them apart- her sister deserved better than some two-bit hack with great hair and a shitty attitude. Remus did too, but she couldn't break their friendship. As bitter as she felt to admit it, being friends with that stinking Potter made him happier. So James wasn't expendable.

Peter, on the other hand, was completely useless. He was jumpy around Remus in a way that must have confused the other students. Whenever she saw him flinch away from Remus, Iris remembered that even at the best of times in her timeline, he had been a cowardly little rat. Her lip curled. And he was a sell-out. Granted, he hadn't hurt anyone yet, but he would if she let him. Why let him, when it would be so easy to get rid of him?

If Peter were gone, it would even be good for the cause in a much broader way than just getting rid of the coward who sold out Harry's parents and spied on others (although the deep anger stirring in her gut from the part of her that remembered learning Peter was the reason her/Harry's beloved Lily had died indicated that revenge was motivation enough on its own). Peter could do so much more good than simply not doing any evil- he could also be an object lesson that would encourage the wizarding world to take the death eater threat more seriously. It wasn't much of a threat yet, to be sure, and no one knew to attribute the occasional disappearances of half-bloods and the not-so-rare assaults on muggleborns to Voldemort's minions, but the signs were there.

How would it affect Voldemort's pureblood recruiting base if he was thought to have killed one of their own children? Granted, Peter was a useless, untalented worm with absolutely no value to either faction, but no one knew that yet. He was just a second year from a relatively well-off family. Wouldn't it be for the greater good to push him off the ice, as it were, and make others think twice about siding with a man who would kill a pureblood child to make a point?

It wouldn't even be that unfair- Voldemort really wouldn't care more for pureblood children than others, he was a half blood. The fact that he didn't actually harm Peter was largely irrelevant in light of the fact that he would feed a hundred children to a tiger if it would get him fifty cents to buy a lollipop.

_Ah, what am I thinking_? Iris stretched and tucked a butterfly-shaped page marker into the book she'd unintentionally been ignoring. She tossed it onto her bedside table and padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth_. It's not like I would miss Peter… but I probably shouldn't kill him. Anyway, even if I wanted to make the world a better place like that, I'd need an opportunity. I can't just haul off in Charms or drown him in his cauldron. I couldn't be caught, and if he died in Hogwarts I'd run into the same issue Voldemort did- they'd talk about closing the school down. It's tactically unsound_. She paused when she realized that she was less concerned about the morality of killing someone yet to commit a crime than she was about the logistics. _I guess it's not so much that I'd feel bad about killing him, it's that it could hurt my cause if I do it stupidly. Food for thought_. She spat the paste into the sink and rinsed her mouth out. She went to sleep effortlessly and slept like a baby until her alarm went off in the morning.


	12. Crash and Burn

I've received the (rather valid) complaint that I haven't really been fleshing out a lot of characters, so I worked to rectify that a bit. Reviews are lovely, thank you all!

Narcissa Black sneered at Iris when she pushed past a group of upper year Slytherins and Ravenclaws on her way to a seat by Lily in the Quidditch stands. Iris gave her a nasty look right back, and enjoyed the surprised reaction she got. _What_, she thought darkly_, is the mudblood not supposed to retaliate? Well, screw you and the horse you rode in on_. The game itself was relatively boring, standard fare- Iris felt the lingering touches of Harry's personality rising up indignantly at the thought, but she just couldn't enjoy it even though she knew he should have.

The people in the stands around her seemed enraptured by the game, but she just didn't have the energy to care about Quidditch games. They just all seem the same- a bunch of teenagers fighting over a soccer ball for forty minutes and then suddenly being interrupted by the two dorks floating around who finally decide to leap at the snitch when they get so bored they consider lobotomization as a legitimate alternative to watching the ball go through the hoop one more time.

She paused . She might be projecting her feelings, just a little bit. Harry's memories seemed to show that he, at least, hadn't been too bored while searching for the snitch. He actually would have been at the edge of his seat in rapt attention given the chance to see James' very first game. Maybe watching James be a total dick for a year and a half had soured Harry's consciousness on the subject as much as it had hers?

She'd gotten the first letter of the year from Viktor- the first time she'd gotten one while at Hogwarts, actually, since she hadn't made contact with him last year. She was glad to hear his life was working out rather well- although he wasn't particularly close to his twin/father either, he had good friends on his Quidditch team and was on track to becoming pretty famous.

He would be a pretty good rallying point, if they needed one. Without Harry's notoriety as the Boy-Who-Lived, they were just a gaggle of kids (incredibly good-looking and intelligent kids, but kids nonetheless). They might need the respectability he could provide if they needed people to pay attention to them.

Honestly, though… at this point, she wasn't sure what she needed Fleur and Viktor to help her with. They were too far away to act as cover when she needed to do sneaky things, and couldn't get to Britain to help her with things like basilisk harvesting without a whole lot of notice. She would need back up to go after some of the horcruxes, absolutely. But until she got to that point, she might be better off working alone. They couldn't exert political influence at this point, so they were pretty useless for sabotaging Voldemort's rise to power.

Of course, when she eventually got Harry into a body of his own, it might be easiest to send him out of the country to get a wand and do some training. Maybe he could stay with Fleur's family? It's much easier to convince people that you're foreign than it is to convince them you grew up in the next town over, it's just that no one has ever heard of you or your parents, you had no education, friends, your parents have never been employed and oh yeah, you forgot where you lived.

She'd sent a letter off to Fleur earlier in the week, addressed to her new name but including her real name in the body as an off-hand confirmation that she was who she said she was. Of course, mentioning that her nickname was Hermione was probably quite enough of a clue to get along with in the first place, so it was almost certainly over kill to mention just how much she liked flowers.

She'd claimed to be participating in a penpal program, under the assumption that Fleur's parents were likely to read a strange piece of mail coming from England to their ten year-old daughter. Hopefully they would come to the conclusion that she was strange but safe for their daughter to contact. That letter had stretched her recollection of French to its limits, however, and she'd spent the next few days attempting to brush up her vocabulary in anticipation of her return letter. Between Fleur and Viktor, she was getting a lot of practice on her language skills. It was much safer to have letters that the kids sitting next to her at the table couldn't read.

Not that anyone was likely to be close enough to try to catch a glimpse, anyway. She slumped a bit, unhappy. It seemed that Remus's desertion was of the permanent sort. She occasionally caught him giving her guilty looks when she sat alone at meals, but he wasn't making any effort to include her. She had to remind herself that he was just a lonely little boy who was finally fitting in with the other boys, of course he wasn't going to jeopardize that. He was just a kid, not the mature man she remembered from third year. Ha, maybe symmetry would hold out and he'd come into her life again next year?

The boys really were turning into the Marauders this year. Iris didn't remember James and Sirius causing all that much trouble last year, but they had definitely discovered a capacity to covertly express themselves through pranks at some point. Granted, their pranks were just plain stupid at this point, and generally not all that funny.

She rather desperately hoped that they wouldn't get very far past the point of causing desks to make fart sounds and switching the pumpkin juice at the Hufflepuff table for the teacher's wine in a rather pathetic attempt to deflect the blame from them, but she knew it was probably a foregone conclusion. Now that they had Remus's brainpower, the monstrous little hellions would probably only degenerate. They only had so many stages of evolution left before they were complete slugs, but they didn't seem to be particularly bothered about that.

She idly considered attempting to give them a group nickname before they got to it- wouldn't they just be delighted to be collectively referred to as 'those Gryffindor Buttwipes' or 'the Poncy Pirates'? Alas, she didn't really have the desire to make it stick, and she didn't want to hurt Remus's feelings. Even though he was acting like a total jerk. So they would probably end up The Marauders again. Shame, it was a little too dignified for them.

Transfiguration that day had been one of those, bizarre, pointless exercises in changing some type of bird into household items. In other words, Iris was silently steaming about animal mistreatment and compiling a list of reasons magical education clearly needed more intelligent arrangement and standardization when she and Lily heard shouting around the corridor where most of their class had already escaped. Iris shrugged when Lily gave her a quizzical look, and the two hurriedly jogged around the corner to investigate.

The tableau that greeted them was uncomfortably reminiscent of the memory Harry had seen of his father bullying Severus. James was the bully, (_of course he was_, Iris thought acidly) but Severus wasn't the victim this time.

Not that this fact made things any better. It might actually have been worse, as the student James was picking on appeared to be a year below them. Instead of Severus, the Slytherin victim was a smaller boy who was cringing against the wall with a jarringly defiant face, his bag spilled all over the floor and ink on his white blazer.

The defiance on that face was as familiar as the jarring, dark features that were forming the expression. _Is that Sirius's little brother_? Iris wondered to herself, feeling dazed. Sirius himself looked a little flushed and angry, but with a jerky motion and a swish of his robes he was soon stalking away down the corridor, away from the conflict. Remus looked more than a little uncomfortable with his arms crossed over his stomach, but Peter's eyes were wide, gleeful, and absolutely piggy.

Bizarre. She'd never met Regulus, of course. He'd been gone long before she was in Hogwarts… Before she was born, probably. For some reason she had imagined he was more than one year below Sirius, and that he would be a Ravenclaw. He hadn't been particularly ambitious, after all. She knew that he'd sided with his family against Sirius at some point (was that really happening already?) and that he'd joined Voldemort at some point, but he just didn't seem to fit the Slytherin mold she had in her head. He never seemed to have wanted anything until he decided to try to stop Voldemort by destroying his locket horcrux.

_Had he died in that cave originally_? she numbly wondered now that she saw him for the first time. _Was the story that he'd been killed by Voldemort just a story to cover up that they didn't know what had happened to him, or did he escape the inferi and met Voldemort himself? _

She doubted it. If Voldemort had reason to believe his locket had been moved, he would have investigated it and probably moved his other horcruxes to be safe, assuming that Regulus might have talked to someone else about his intentions. No. That little boy in front of her had grown up to be dragged down into the water by cold, hungry hands. She owed that little boy, even if he hadn't yet defected. After all, he hadn't joined yet either. She ignored the whisper that this was hypocrisy in her head, and whipped out her wand.

No one else appeared to be doing anything, although Lily looked disgusted. Iris caught Peter's eye and absolutely sneered, filling the expression with as much condescension as she possibly could. His flinch caught Remus's attention and he looked at her with wide eyes, clearly guilty and embarrassed. _Good. He should be ashamed_.

Wordlessly (too angry to even speak) Iris cast a body-bind jinx on James (that absolute moron, foul, cruel little monster of a boy) and stalked away from the confrontation, back the way she had came. She ignored the confused murmurs from the crowd when she heard James tilt over and crack his nose on the floor, but almost grinned at the other crack she'd heard. Maybe she'd gotten lucky and the prat had broken his wand when he fell. A girl can dream, right?

Her sister whipped around a half-second after she did and grabbed her hand. Iris noticed that Lily was actually shaking with rage. Lily started. "That bone-headed, arrogant jerk! What was he doing, picking on an underclassman? Not that he should be picking on anyone at all, but the fact that he's stooping to bullying little kids in the hall… it's absolutely infuriating! What a smelly little bug! I'm going to tell Professor McGonagall what we saw. Ooooh, I wish there'd been a Prefect there. Someone needs to deflate that big head of his. He thinks he's so funny! But he's not, he's just not!" She was struggling for strong enough words to express her anger at this point. "He's… he's… the unwanted deformed offspring of a lemur monkey and a toadstool, and he hasn't got half his parents' brains or good looks!"

By the end of the tirade, Iris was giggling. "Lily, you're amazing" she said fondly. "Don't ever change. But I don't think we need to tattle on him, he already got to go to the hospital wing and detentions don't seem to deter him. Let's go get some ice cream." She slid her arm up and linked it through her sister's companionably. "I bet the house elves would be willing to help us make some homemade… we haven't done that in forever."

Lily's vengeful instincts lost the battle with her memories of making ice cream on holidays. "oooh, lets. Who needs dinner anyways?"

* * *

After that incident, Remus tried several times to get back in Iris's good graces. She rather unenthusiastically allowed him to sit with her in the library several times and gradually grew somewhat comfortable with his presence again. They didn't really regain their former closeness, and Iris didn't feel comfortable being physically affectionate with him anymore, even after she forgave him for doing nothing in the face of something he knew was wrong. Her desire to rekindle her friendship was somewhat tempered by the fact that she had good reason to believe he would continue to stand by when James and Sirius mistreated others because he was desperate for their friendship.

It was infinitely more amusing than anything else that had happened recently when James first attempted to romance Lily about two weeks after they'd caught him picking on Regulus (who Iris had seen giving her speculative looks more than once at dinner). It was the least smooth thing Iris had ever seen, and would undoubtedly have ended in painful failure even if he hadn't messed it up by fidgeting and awkwardly complimenting her when he asked her if she'd like to come flying with him (an activity Lily had little patience for). As it was, Lily shot him down in a blaze of glory, forcing him to walk backwards almost to the door in a hilarious retreat while she called him unsavory names and made somewhat unkind assertions about what vegetables ranked above him on the bell curve of intelligence and poked him in the chest.

After that, James sulked for a while. His next attempt was apparently one of reconnaissance. Either that, or he was attempting to endear himself to Lily by being friendly with Severus. The attempt was largely unsuccessful, mostly due to Severus's complete lack of patience and acidic tongue for anyone who wasn't a twin or teacher. Next James tried Iris herself-rather reluctantly, but he wasn't nearly as graceless as she'd expected after she'd face-planted him. She tolerated his presence because there was little point in doing otherwise.

As pathetic as it was, she rather enjoyed being included with the boys when they bantered at meals. Sirius and James had a system of quick repartee going on that sped up and up until no one else knew what was going on and they erupted into giggles. Eventually, she became somewhat integrated into their little mob- she absolutely would not provide homework help, but she gave them pointers on several pranks. This was done less in the spirit of fun and more because she was almost physically pained by their incompetence and lack of imagination.

When he wasn't bullying other kids, James had a strange charm and a truly formidable force of personality. He had impressive convictions about right and wrong, for a child, but his worldview was painfully simplistic. His friends were his friends for life- which was wonderful. Unfortunately, he showed the same amount of conviction for his enemies, and it was apparently rather easy to get onto that list. The quickest way was getting sorted into green and silver, but apparently saying something negative about his friends would suffice as well. _He's more wolfish than Remus could ever be_, she thought. James has an incredible sense of pack, and everyone who isn't pack can go to Timbuktu in a pumpkin carriage.

A sharp poke in her side interrupted her musings. She turned to glare at Sirius, who was completely undaunted despite his drastic rise on her shit list (the one for people she wasn't going to kill, anyways). Perhaps he just didn't recognize the danger? She experimentally growled at him. It was thinner and higher-pitched than she'd like, but probably about as good as the vocal chords of a twelve-year old girl could produce.

"Iris, you're being weird again. Were you fantasizing about the wolves that raised you again?" James snorted and then unsuccessfully attempted to dodge when Remus elbowed him.

Iris grinned in a rather feral manner at Sirius. "I was, in fact. We were just getting to the good part where we dragged a troupe of first years into the Forbidden Forest and used their intestines to jump rope. Wolves are surprisingly good at jump rope. We did that on our last holiday to the beach, in fact. You should see how the little old ladies knitting on the beach can run when they're really inspired." She mimed a hasty shuffle, holding imaginary skirts to the side.

Remus sighed and held his hand to his head while James and Sirius giggled and shuffled with her. It quickly degenerated to the point where the two miscreants were tripping each other and whacking the other with imaginary handbags in an attempt to feed the other to the wolf by outstripping their friend. Iris valiantly pretended she didn't see the not-so-subtle subtext involved in their faux-terrified looks at Remus. Eventually, their own giggles petered out and the encouragement they were getting from Pettigrew failed to be enough.

Iris looked away, forcing down a scowl. Merely being within ten feet of Pettigrew sent her blood pressure through the roof, although she was careful to hide it. If she did decide to smite his ass, it would be really stupid to implicate herself as a suspect by showing unexplained dislike of him. He hadn't bothered her nearly this much last year, but now he seemed to represent all of her plans and what she needed to do. Or not do, depending. Basically, she was confused.

Regardless, she didn't like Pettigrew as a human being and she wasn't going to let herself change her mind on the basis that he could mature. She wondered if Remus could tell that she disliked Peter- he was unnaturally perceptive at times. She was trying really hard not to attribute it to wolfy, heightened senses, but she couldn't come up with another explanation. Right now, he just looked spectacularly uncomfortable, fidgeting and tugging at his collar while they walked down the hall. Sympathy tugged at her heartstrings- his friends' fun was making him unhappy. Iris snatched his sleeve, stopping him in his tracks and pulling him down an intersecting hallway she recognized. He looked quizzically at her, but she held her finger to her lips and easily slipped off her shoes to silently pad away. He followed.

They had only been about a hundred feet from the statue of an unnaturally tall and thin witch. She tapped it with her wand, whispered the password that would open it, and stepped inside. She grinned to herself when Remus quietly swore in surprise behind her._ I take it that the boys haven't started exploring for their map yet. Perhaps they're meant to complete that project next year?_

"Come on", she whispered. "I want to surprise them." She took off a jog, eager to make up for the time they'd lost going sideways. "I wonder if they know we're gone yet" Remus panted. She smothered a smile. The boy needed to workout, apparently.

She sped up, easily loping at a fast speed and out-pacing her friend. "We're going to leap out, tickling charms blazing. Give me cover, alright?" she called over her shoulder. He huffed in what she assumed was assent, and ran right into her back when she stopped in the dark. She went tumbling over to the ground, and lost all her air in an "oof!" when Remus landed on her in an unfortunate tangle of limbs. God, that boy was all elbows. And surprisingly heavy somehow. She gasped in pain and tried to breathe, cringing at the pain in her ribs.

"Owwww" she moaned. She heard alarmed voices on the other side of the painting they were behind. Disgusted, she thumped her head on the ground. She felt Remus scramble off her while the portrait slid away and the curious faces of her friends greeted her, accompanied by blinding light. "Reeeemusss" she whined as loudly as she could with so little air. "I think our ambush is ruined."

"You don't say" Sirius commented rather archly. "I assume you were just so overcome with emotion that you assaulted the fair lady." Iris snorted, pushing herself up to her elbows. She didn't get any farther- Sirius swooped down and effortlessly picked her up, turning her in his arms so that she faced upwards and he readjusted her into a princess hold. She sputtered. "Hey, what the hell!" Sirius snuggled her to his chest. "Just making sure he didn't smush you with his big bum, love." Remus's face burnt and he wordlessly strode out into the hall. James laughed, looking between the two. "Hey, wait up!" He took off, nearly running in an attempt to catch Remus. Peter scuttled along after.

"so…." Sirius started faux-awkwardly. Iris's face felt red-hot, and she wished she hadn't noticed that Sirius's chest rumbled when his voice (shockingly low for a boy of his age) sounded. _MERLIN, that boy is strong_.

"Sirius?"

"Yes, love?"

"Put me down, or I am going to kill you slowly with a thumbtack and an ice cube."

"Whoa there, that's a little too kinky for me". He hastily set her down, brushing off her back as he did so. "He hit you pretty hard, didn't he? You looked stunned."

She took a moment to readjust, one arm curled around her ribs and breathing slowly. "Yeah, it was mostly my fault. I was running really fast to try to pop out ahead of you guys, and I didn't think to warn him that I was stopping. And he didn't know the passage, so he really couldn't have known. Oof". She slowly took a deep inhalation and tried not to wince. She'd gotten all the air knocked out of her. She allowed it when Sirius slung an arm over her shoulders to steady her. "Aren't you just a gentleman?" she drawled.

"The parents tried to teach me manners." He cheerfully informed. "Mind you, I get these things confused. Is it meant to be "stab the waiter with your salad fork", or is that the function of a dessert spoon?"

"I can't keep those straight either", she murmured.


	13. Snake Charming for Amateurs

Iris twitched in her seat in the common room while an unnecessarily loud game of cards captivated most of the room, restraining a very Hermione-esque urge to drag her bed to the library and set up a base of operations. She had gotten very little use out of the Hogwarts library in the past year and a half, as she knew the first year material as well as she did her alphabet. Despite the fact that she had barely ventured inside in this time period, she had very fond memories of burying herself in the stacks. The library had always been there for her- when she was friendless and alone first year, when she was composing an absolutely brilliant essay, and even when she dragged Ron there kicking and screaming to do research about whatever the evil threat of the year happened to be.

She knew there was very little chance that even the Restricted Section was going to pull through for her this time, however. She didn't know how exactly she was going to go about creating a body for Harry (hence the need for research) but she could only assume that it would be some sort of Seriously Scary Black Magic. Oddly enough, the Hogwarts card catalog didn't even include such a category as a reference point. She had checked. Twice.

Perhaps she was just feeling nostalgic?

How pathetic. Iris shook her head, disgusted with herself. Harry and Hermione's Hogwarts years had both royally sucked. With three people forming the consciousness in her head, she couldn't really claim that she'd ever had those experiences. She was feeling nostalgia for sucky things that hadn't even happened to her. Besides, she had friends here. Now that she was closer to the rowdy boys, it was almost certain that she could find someone who was willing to traipse about after hours.

Despite her lingering desire for company, Iris slipped out of Gryffindor tower in her socks alone after curfew that same night. She shivered, both from the chill and because the portraits silently watching her pad down the corridors were creepy. It was a relief to creep into the library and vault over the rusty, short gate that surrounded the Restricted Section.

What exactly is the point of a gate that can't keep out a mildly athletic twelve year old? If she'd been in charge of the library, it would not be nearly so easy. She was unlikely to write a letter complaining about it for the time, seeing as it worked in her benefit, but it still rankled a little.

A whispered spell lit up books with traps on them, and she methodically went through the section and disabled them all. It took more time than she'd hoped, but this was a better solution than checking over every book she looked at, and would probably save her time on future trips. Besides… she smirked. It was pretty good curse-breaking practice.

Her eyes were bleary and her head was pounding by the time she gave her search up as a bad job in disgust. The library at school was not going to be any help. She had the vague idea of trying to figure out how Wormtail had managed to make the imp that Harry'd seen him toss into the cauldron. If he could do it, she certainly could.

She suddenly frowned. Wait. There'd been some mocking mention of a woman named Bertha Jerkins or something helping. Did they sacrifice her? Was this something that needed an extra person? Well. No point in worrying about it until she actually knew what she needed. If that plan has to be scrapped, so be it._ I'll decide when I get to that part._ She'd assumed she would have to create something from scratch- she couldn't imagine killing someone else and setting Harry in their body.

_Well… Harry'd look mighty good in Narcissa Black's body_, she snarked. _It's not like she's using her brain, so it would probably be really easy to just move him in_. She giggled a little, fighting down the conflicting feelings of embarrassment, indignance, and her own humor. _Chill, I wouldn't do that. _Probably._ Hey, it would ensure that the horror that was Draco Malfoy would never be unleashed upon the world. Isn't that a worthy cause? _Harry seemed conflicted on that point.

After she set the books back in place, she crept back up stairs and down halls, taking care to avoid the main areas. Her caution was unrewarded- near the passageway she and Remus had tripped in earlier, she heard the click-clack of women's shoes. Iris smothered a groan of frustration. That could only be so many people, and she wasn't too eager to be caught out after curfew by any of them. She took a moment to miss sweet, oblivious Professor Sprout- she wouldn't have cared at all.

Not feeling particularly keen to be dragged back to the tower by her ear when she was already trying to get back, she backtracked quickly and silently, wracking her brains for a good hiding spot or alternate route. There wasn't one. Sure, there was the passageway nearby, but there was no way the approaching adult wouldn't hear the sound of stone grinding when the passage opened and investigate. Even if she escaped this time, she would have alerted the staff that there was a hiding spot in the area in use by students and that would make sneaking more difficult in future.

She ended up ducking into the shadow behind a suit of armor and holding her breath, attempting to use the power of positive thought to turn invisible. She vaguely remembered reading a children's story about changelings that could do that- become invisible by holding their breath and desiring not to be seen. Hey, it could work. Magic is largely intent and desire… _You don't see me, I'm not here. Move along, nothing to see here. No girl in the corner_. It might have been the lack of oxygen, but she swore that her skin was blending into the darkness unnaturally well.

The professor that rounded the corner was McGonagall, looking bone-tired and shockingly old. Iris felt guilt tug at her heart- it was because of naughty students like her that the professors were run ragged at night, sent on utterly pointless patrols. Really, the concept was asinine. Professors needed sleep too, and walking set routes in a dark castle was highly unlikely to catch recalcitrant students. Not when it was so easy to hide. Security really needed to be stepped up a notch. Even without an invisibility cloak, traversing the halls was pathetically easy for anyone with the sense to be quiet and listen for footsteps.

She waited in the dark a full minute after McGongall's steady footsteps had faded, and slipped up to the tower. There was no point in joining her roommates in slumber- there was only a little more than two hours until it was time to start the day. She only had two classes to get through today, and then she could crash. Instead of sleeping, she picked through the room silently to gather up her portable cauldron, Lily's spare, and all the supplies she had purchased for the aging potion and the Mandrake solution.

It was dead silent downstairs and merely cutting and crushing ingredients seemed sacrilegiously loud, like moaning in a cathedral. She busied her hands, and had the Mandrake solution bubbling in the first stage within half an hour. The Aging potion was much simpler- it only needed to simmer from this point.

She stretched languidly, and then went back upstairs to change her clothes, brush her teeth and hair, and gather up all the vials she could find for her potions.

When she got back downstairs, she was surprised to see the Common Room was no longer empty. A light-haired upperclassman boy was laying on his back on one of the huge couches. Laying wasn't exactly the right word- he was slightly propped up on one armrest with his elbows to either side of his body to support his novel.

She tried not to flush, reminding herself that there was nothing at all incriminating about the potion she was making. He wasn't paying attention to her anyways. He wasn't paying attention to much outside of his book at all, actually. He didn't even seem to notice that his shirt had risen up to expose a few inches of warm, hard stomach. Or the distracting ways that the light from the big French windows was reflecting off his hair.

She forced down a blush and tried to ignore his presence while she added the next set of ingredients and changed the direction a ladle was stirring. _He's a total __**hunk**__, how have I not noticed him before? _She bit her lip in penance for the thought and tried to ignore the worrying indication that hormones were finally speaking up.

A small part of her protested. She wasn t really that far off of his age, no matter how she looked at it. Hermione and Harry had been teens when they came back in time, and her actual body was almost thirteen. The boy she was ogling was maybe sixteen? That wasn't so bad. She mentally gave herself the go-ahead to ogle. She just had to look without touching for maybe another year and a half? She could do that. She'd fought hormones the first time, and so had Harry. She was probably the most qualified person in the world, when it came to the subject of teenage hormones.

Bolstered by the thought that she wasn't creepily perving on a school student, she allowed herself to look, trailing her eyes over his trim abdomen, beautifully masculine forearms, the super-sexy lines of definition where his shoulders met his neck- and then paled when she caught the amused brown eyes that flicked her direction, and the eyebrow that Mr. Abs **_slooooowly_** raised from under his book. Oh bloody hell, abort mission, abort! Cheeks burning, she concentrated very, very determinedly on her cauldron until she heard the frenetic thumping that meant her peers were coming down the stairs. _There's the awkwardness I remember. That's great._

Her classmates were moving surprisingly speedily this morning. She was confused for a moment, until she realized that they were probably now starting to worry about the enormous Charms project they had to work on. It wasn't actually due until the end of the year, but they had to have a partner, topic, and some progress before Christmas break only a few weeks away.

Naturally, Iris had completed her entire project weeks ago. Actually, she'd sat down and worked her way through all of her syllabi in the first weeks to free up her time. She now only needed to pay attention to see when Professors assigned extra work as punishments and add accordingly.

As Hermione, she'd spent a lot of time helping other people with their homework. As Harry, she'd spent a lot of time ignoring Hermione's good advice and then scrambling to finish things. She wasn't going to repeat either experience. Her time was precious. Her peers seemed to think that her hard-nosed policy of not helping with homework was harsh, but it was necessary. She actually had much bigger issues to work on than another sad, futile essay about Bogrod the Bad Goblin who attempted to unite magical races in 1208, and ended up being lynched by centaurs when he visited for negotiations.

However, James plopped down on the carpet in a way that implied he had somehow missed the company memo that she just didn't do homework help. He gave her his enormous puppy eyes (and inwardly she groaned, because **sure** Harry'd gotten his eye color from Lily but everyone was WRONG when they simplified and said he had her eyes, he had James' pretty, big sad doggy eyes) and held a folder out towards her hands, like a blood offering to a pagan goddess.

"I'm not asking you to do any writing or research for me!" He hurriedly spat out. "I just need a second opinion on whether or not what I want to do is actually possible and if I'm looking in the right direction with these spells." She flipped open the folder, not expecting much, but nearly froze when she comprehended what she was looking at.

James had written out the bare bones of the Marauder's Map- a project proposition, theories about how certain spells might interact with each other, and lists of resources and spells he'd already researched- a set of heart-wrenchingly beautiful, alphabetical, bullet-pointed list. It was so glorious she could have wept. She'd always assumed that Remus had been the brains behind that project in an ill-fated attempt to control the amount of trouble his friends got into. This… had potential. Her interest in James skyrocketed.

She tossed the folder to the ground and stared into his eyes. "I can't believe you sometimes. What are you even thinking?"

The anticipatory grin slid off his features like butter off hot bread. "So, it's a dumb idea, then?"

"Are you insane? It's a bloody brilliant idea, and you were going to cripple it by letting a teacher know about it. Do you have any idea what you could do with this?"

She leaned in, uncomfortably close, and intentionally widened her eyes to a point where she almost certainly looked insane. "This idea presents so much opportunity for controlled chaos, and you were going to hand it in to Flitwick. You bring great shame upon your household animals."

She stood and grinned down at him. "We're going to go inform Flitwick that we're doing our project together. We're going to hand in what I already have planned, and spend our work time together secretly making this magic happen. For chaos."

"But I was working with Sir-"

"For chaos!"

They ended up forming a group of three, with the Professor's approval. Flitwick was a little surprised that she didn't intend to work alone this time, but probably thought the experience would be good for her. They'd gone through several drafts by the time Christmas vacation rolled around. The twins had disagreed about what to do over break- Lily stayed on campus, while Iris went and spent her break with Petunia. She somewhat nervously noted that she was getting low on funds, but luckily received a generous bounty of money at Christmas, along with her (relatively cheap, but still pricy) heat vision goggles.

Petunia still wanted to know what she could be doing with those goggles, but eventually let it go when all she could pry out what "magical experimentation to see if there's something going on that is not normally visible when a certain spell is used". Granted, the basilisk stare probably didn't count as a spell, but she didn't really have a better way to describe it without resorting to honesty, which was against her policy.

Iris sent off a pretty dress for Lily and other trinkets for the girls in her dorm a few days before Christmas. Afterwards, she went on the mother of all clothes shopping trips in an attempt to ensure she didn't have to next year, taking care to get slightly loose items that she could use as she aged… both naturally and with the potion to pass as an adult. She bemoaned just how awkward seventies styles were for a while, but suppressed the frustration as best as she could. She did do one thing that she didn't have an explanation for just yet- she got a wig to wear when she was in her adult form and disguised. It wasn't a subtle one, but then again, she wasn't a subtle person. She spent the last of her money on unbreakable vials for basilisk venom- because she really didn't need that ending up anywhere outside of bottles.

The wig might have been a premature investment, she realized on the train back to Hogwarts. She'd already decided that it would be best to sell the venom covertly, and outside of Britain to minimize the likelihood that the Dark Lord of Overcompensation would hear about a sudden influx into the market of one of the few things that could destroy a horcrux. That seemed like the sort of information that might compel a sullen and paranoid Dark Lord to move his toys and check on his basilisk. She didn't really want either of those things to happen, although she was momentarily amused by the thought of his reaction to the discovery that there was another Parselmouth in Britain. Perhaps he'd try to recruit her?

But she already knew someone who lived outside of Britain, who was under much less adult supervision than she was. She hastily scratched out a letter to Viktor, cursing a little when the train jostled and made her writing ugly.

Rearranging her plans for dealing with the venom had given her an unexpected idea about dealing with the basilisk. She didn't have to go alone- she knew at least one good friend who would know better than to react with shock and suspicion to the revelation that she spoke to snakes… and the implied trust in telling him might compel Remus to open up to her.

The idea of taking him with her was exciting… but it was wrong. He was actually twelve. It would be unconscionable to drag him along on her adventures while he was essentially untrained. Perhaps in another year or so, or on a smaller venture. He was mature, yes, but she would be corrupting his childhood in the way that Dumbledore had Harry's and Hermione's by failing to protect them.

Taking him to see the basilisk was a stupid idea, but opening up about parseltongue still had potential. She tabled the thought. They might regain their former closeness if he didn't have the stupid idea that she'd care about his condition.

At absolute last resort… they'd be covering werewolves in defense against the dark arts third year, if curriculum was the same as it had been in her time. She could make her opinions plain then without having to imply she knew anything about Remus.

When she got back to the castle, Severus and Lily were waiting for her in the entrance hall. She couldn't stop the grin that pulled at her face, especially when Lily worked with her to bully Severus into baking cookies in the kitchen. He put up token protests, but Lily seemed certain that he wanted the soft chocolate cookies coated in confectioner's sugar as much as she did, and she set him to work pressing cherries into the exact center of every pastry she painstakingly molded.

Lily and Severus were great to make cookies with, but not so great to take to chat with a smelly snake. At least, that was her assumption, and she wasn't planning on testing it anytime soon. Iris was a little depressed to be having this dangerous confrontation alone. Her past lives had strong allies almost as soon as they entered the wizarding world, so going solo was strange. Well, she amended; she was only as alone as someone who essentially has split personalities can be.

Strangely enough, the reminder that the people in her head would always be there for her didn't make her feel any better.

Standing in front of the gigantic statue of a bearded man, she wondered if she really had to say the whole thing Riddle had sad. Voldemort was more than a little dramatic- would Salazar Slytherin really have made his password "Speak to me Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four"? After putting on her heat vision goggles (and feeling absolutely stupid, before she transfigured them into something a little more like sunglasses) she tried "**speak to me Slytherin**" and a couple other less embarrassing variations on what she remembered Riddle saying. It only took a couple minutes before she gave up and realized that yes; Slytherin really had done such a thing. Wizards are fucking weird sometimes.

**Who calls**?** And why did it take you so many tries to let me out? **Scales shifted on stone, softly scraping. She heard a rock fall, and remembered how big the serpent was.

Iris shivered a little. **I am Iris, heir of Slytherin! I would speak with you, great one**. She regretfully noted that Iris (probably flowers in general) did not translate to anything remotely intimidating, and wished she'd thought ahead before introducing herself as "the pretty-scented hiding place".

The Basilisk emerged, cascading out of the mouth in a controlled motion, like the shiniest vomit the world had ever seen. _That design could have been better thought through_, Iris idly noted. As it turned out, the serpent had a much higher body temperature than she would have expected. _Aren't snakes cold-blooded_?

Hermione rose up in her head and smacked some sense into her. _Now isn't the time for that. And that's not what cold-blooded means._ She could feel undue interest stirring in her- Harry's consciousness was almost never this involved. The pluralities in her thinking stretched at her brain and divided her attention in ways she couldn't afford right now.

Hyper aware, Iris walked to the serpent's face and stroked her, surprised to feel that the warm scales under her eyes were soft as silk. **You are beautiful**. Much prettier than Harry had recollected, anyways. That might be due to the fact that she could only see outlines, but flattery never hurt.

**Yes, I am. I am sorry you are so ugly, short-limbed one.** A long tongue flicked out near Iris's left. Ew, creepy. And it smelled absolutely terrible. She was reminded that the snake had to feed on rats and she shuddered. She was smelling rat-breath. **Perhaps you will grow more attractive. You are just a hatchling. Why does the one who fed me last send a hatchling? Was its intention to insult me? Or are you food?**

_Just a snake… just a snake.. she doesn't mean to be rude…_ If anyone had cared to ask at that moment, they would find that Iris was supremely displeased at being insulted by a giant poisonous monster, but somewhat pacified by the amusing notion the snake referred to Voldemort with the pronoun 'it'. The implication that the serpent thought Voldemort was still likely to give her orders or food was troubling, though- the snake might actually be loyal to him. It took her a moment to compose a lie. Iris hissed **It could not come. I am its hatchling. I have need of your venom. **

The thought occurred that she was a little too honest sometimes when she realized that she felt a little guilty about lying to a snake. She consoled herself with the thought that in a way, those things were true. Voldemort couldn't come if he didn't know he needed to, and she did indirectly owe her gift of serpent speech to Riddle. The snake was unlikely to understand the distinction between magical and genetic inheritance.

The deception didn't appear to persuade the snake. It remained silent for a long moment, and she tried to control her nervousness. A lot of animals sense things that humans can't- a fast heartbeat or the scent of fear could tip it off.

The snake reared up painfully slowly, her front half slowly wavering as if she were ready to strike, her tail coiling tighter. She scented the air again. **Lies. You do not smell like it at all.** Her tongue flickered madly. **Tell me the truth, little one.**

Fuck it.

Iris lifted the hand clutching her wand and sent a blasting curse straight into the beast's brain. It was really, spectacularly cool even when seen through heat vision goggles. It was a little less cool when warm brain matter landed in her hair and something wet slipped inside her shirt. She sighed and stripped it off so that the flesh plopped onto the ground, holding her filthy clothes far from her skin. _Apparently, I need practice talking to snakes_. Harry was laughing hysterically in her head. "Shut up!" she snapped aloud. "How was I to know she'd be able to compare my scent to Voldemort's? For that matter, if the scent was what told her I didn't belong here, how the hell did Ginny do this?"

She methodically destroyed the beast's eyes in case death didn't remove their ass-kicking properties, then took off her goggles, thankful that part of her face was clean at least. _Maybe I should make my own basilisk_, she thought somewhat guiltily.

The serpent didn't seem to actually be that bad, and she was intended to be a last defense for the castle. If she hadn't been loyal to Voldemort, she might have been okay. A toad and a chicken's egg were readily available in the forest. Plus, having a basilisk around was great for eliminating spiders. She'd take a murderous snake over eight-legged ickies any goddamn day.

The vials that she had weren't going to be enough for this, but she used all of them anyways to collect the venom slowly dripping from the dead animal's fangs and dissolving the stonework. Once that was done, she walked around the animal, considering her options. The hide was probably valuable. It was probably all good for something… she just didn't know what. She idly considered dropping the thing off in the kitchen and having terrified house elves make her snake steak for the next five meals, but that was probably a bad idea. Even though she'd heard that snake was delicious. Magical snake could be something else entirely.

In the end, she modified a cutting curse to peel the hide off, painstakingly carving the animal like she was taking extra clay from a sculpture. After she'd got it all of, she scoured it with cleaning charms until all the scale shone and the inside was smooth and lacked any flesh. Setting the hide aside, she cleaned up most of the filth around the kill and cast a powerful preserving charm on the rest of the corpse, then set it in an air-tight bubble to help prevent decay. She'd investigate any possible uses when she had the time.

After that was done, she couldn't help but compare the grime and mold on the rest of the chamber with the gleaming white stones under her work area. She spent the next hour cleaning the main area, and then conjured floating pink and blue lights. They made her smile, so she set them to slowly wander around the chamber like bright fireflies and conjured up some green and yellow lights as well.

After she got rid of the obvious problem, this might make a rather nice hideout. She had to go back to the tower soon, but it would be an excellent project for another time. She cast the strongest cleaning charms she could on her body and clothes without flaying herself, but she still felt foul and wanted a shower badly.

When her sister asked where she had been, Iris said something non-committal about having found an excellent reading spot. That was the wrong thing to say. She was ambushed as soon as she left the bathroom, dripping on the floor while her sister pried. Lily ended up dragging a promise to show it to her later out of Iris. It wouldn't be so terrible to take Lily there after it'd been cleaned up anyways. If she changed her mind and wanted to keep it private, she could just take her sister to the room of requirement and let her think that was where Iris had been spending time.


	14. End of Second Year

This is unfortunately a bit shorter than I intended my chapters to be, but it came to a logical ending point.

Iris laid on her poster bed and watched Lily scramble to get dressed with a critical eye. "Do you really have to match Severus?" She rolled over and sat up, clutching a pillow. "It's just Slughorn's end of year party, not tea with the Queen."

"Like you'd know!" Lily huffed over her shoulder from where she was frantically digging through her trunk for something nice to wear. "I don't know why you refuse to come to his parties, they could be good for you. I was talking to a fourth year, and he said that these parties are really important. Professor Slughorn knows everyone. He helped a lot of them get the jobs they have now. You can't argue with results like that". An unsatisfactory hairclip was rejected with more physical force than necessary, and it clattered to the floor.

"I certainly _can_ argue- he doesn't get these people where they are, he latches onto people who are connected or intelligent and then claims their successes are related to him. You're going to be successful anyway. You're confusing cause and effect. The experimentation you and Severus have been doing is seriously cool. How many twelve year olds have ever been able to do what you do? Of course Slughorn is latching onto you."

Iris unfolded the letter from Fleur inviting her over for the summer again, thoughtfully tracing the crease with her fingers. She tapped it, trying to think of what to write to Petunia about their summer plans.

Lily blushed. "We're not doing anything unique yet… just improving on existing recipes." She pulled off her jumper and wiggled into a purple dress with a wide waistband. "I swear," her muffled voice called from inside the fabric "that this was not tight at all when I bought it last summer. Oof!"

Iris swallowed a snicker while her sister stumbled and cursed, banging her hip into the side of her bed in a way that must have been painful. She watched Lily shimmy helplessly for a few moments, clearly stuck in the dress. "Well," she drawled, "it's a shame that you're not a witch." She set her letter down and picked up her wand. "Because a witch would probably use a very controlled growing charm on the dress instead of get caught in it. But don't feel dumb. They're both fine options."

"…Eat socks, Iris."

A carefully aimed and moderated charm hit the dress, and it slipped easily over Lily's now red face. "We should probably take you shopping over the summer. And get slightly different sizes. When you can't buy clothes for almost an entire year... Well, of course you've outgrown them."

"I'm not fat!"

Iris eyed her sister as if she was a giant squid. "I never said you were. We're children. Thing about children is that they grow. Even when they don't want to, Peter Pan."

Lily snatched a pillow off the closest bed and flung it at Iris' face. "Oh, hush." She straightened her skirts in front of the mirror, and picked out a loose string with a critical eye. "Would you pass me a brush?"

Iris leaned over to get said item from her trunk and then tossed it to her sister in an easy underhand. "Here. Not that you need it, your hair is fine." She frowned. "Which is unfair. You got hair in a pretty color, _and_ it doesn't do the weird lion-thing mine does."

"…I have never thought of it in those terms before, but you really do look like you have a mane. And the color… your hair is so dark- I wonder how all three of us girls ended up with such different hair."

Iris sputtered. "Well- But- You're supposed to deny it when I say things like that!" She crossed her arms. "What kind of sister are you?"

"The honest kind. Don't worry. When you're eighty years old and surrounded by cats, you can still count on me to tell you the truth." Iris had to laugh at the shit-eating grin her sister flashed her way.

"Thanks, I appreciate that. I'll tell the truth too. You're going to be late unless you leave in two minutes. That will definitely impress Slughorn! Besides, I bet Sev is already waiting for you."

Lily raced off as soon as she could. Iris flopped back down, sighing. It was sweet to see her sister so excited about doing well in school, but she was a little envious of how innocent her classmates were. She'd been keeping an eye on the newspapers, and she'd seen what looked like the beginnings of Voldemort's activities.

Of course, no one else seemed all that worried, or even paid attention to the unusually high number of disappearances and the anti-Muggle sentiment cropping up in the opinion sections and the legislation. She thought that the teachers might be discussing the topic occasionally, but they were probably weren't making the connections that she was with her foresight.

If one didn't know they were related, everything happening seemed rather minor. Well. That wasn't exactly true- there was a bit of outcry about one particularly steaming pile of proposed legislation. It had passed just last week. It had been phrased innocuously in an attempt to slip under the public's perception, but it worked to empower the Ministry over muggles who didn't want their children attending Hogwarts by legalizing memory and compulsion charms. Of course, that wasn't as controversial as Iris would have thought- plenty of people assumed that their way of life was superior and the muggles shouldn't be able to deny their magical children a magical education.

Iris couldn't help but feel the irony acutely- they had legalized exactly what her father had feared two years ago. They'd probably been unofficially doing so in past, judging by how gung-ho they'd been about obliviating people who didn't need to be. She felt fresh hatred for the wizengamot, administration, and the actual workers who did Obliviation. Were they so stupid that they actually didn't see that it was a violation of human rights, or were they malicious?

It didn't matter. She'd had a nightmare last night about the ministry workers who'd responded to her underage magic all those years ago. Maybe it was time to track them down… If the ministry didn't have obliviators, they wouldn't be doing any obliviation. Granted, they could always train more workers… So the solution to that would be to send such a message that no one else wanted to take up the job.

_That's a bit morbid_. She tossed her pillow in the air and hit it with a slashing curse before it came down. _But it might not be a bad idea_. The cushion twisted for an instant, before it split from top to bottom in a jagged explosion. Fluffy guts scattered in the air, tossed all the way to the ceiling by the force of her spell, before fluttering back down and drifting towards the open window.

She had all sorts of unsettled business with the Ministry… and there were resources there that she could use. Like a time turner, for instance. It would be nice to have an alibi for some things. It only took a moment to wordlessly summon a quill and ink from her trunk, and she began to brainstorm possibilities on the back of Fleur's letter in code. It was probably a good thing that Lily wasn't there to see her smile.

Eventually, she had to put her pen down and think in an attempt to weigh the benefits of having backup in the form of Viktor of Fleur against the possible drawbacks of their disapproval. At least she already knew the layout of the department of mysteries. That was half the danger of going there uninvited. Assuming the shelves with time turners were still near the second door, it would only take her about ten minutes to slip in and out. As long as policies weren't drastically different in the seventies, she also knew when the area would be deserted. Only an invisibility cloak could make it an easier job.

She tabled that thought. James probably had his with him, but she couldn't very well steal a Potter family heirloom, nor could she ask politely to borrow a cloak she'd never been shown to use in a theft. _Well, there's not much that I can do from Hogwarts._

While her sister was out socializing with le crème de la crème, Iris wandered over to the library. Finals were coming up soon, and she hadn't actually done any of the reading this year. It was one thing to do the practical work by memory, but written tests might be a little different. Reviewing couldn't hurt. Apparently, half the castle had the same thought- the study areas were all packed.

Iris made a face- she wasn't a very social individual. There was nothing at all appealing about the prospect of tucking herself in the library like one more sardine in a can. She saw a group of her acquaintances that she might have sat with, but there were no extra chairs. Books under arm, she considered her options.

"It really that crowded? Funny, I'd swear that most of these people didn't know where the library was before today."

She turned, a little surprised that Sirius's little brother was talking to her. He never had before, although he had given her quietly speculative looks ever since she'd cursed James.

Frankly, she wasn't sure what to think about him. She knew that he'd become a death eater under pressure from his parents-but he'd also left of his own volition, dying in an attempt to destroy an abomination of magic. He might not be a bad kid. She was torn between reaching out to him and letting things unfold as they were meant to, inasmuch as someone who came back in time to change the world could leave things alone. "Yes. I think I'm going to find a quiet spot to review elsewhere. They all sort of crawl out of the woodwork at the end of term." Turning, she expected that to be the end of it.

"Know a good spot? If you wouldn't mind me coming, that is." He calmly stared her down with eerie, light eyes both unlike anything she'd ever seen and painfully reminiscent of his brother's.

That might be the sign she was looking for. If he was willing to talk to her, he probably wasn't past saving. "You know, I do know a great spot. I'll show you."

She led him to the Room of Requirement in a comfortable silence. Regulus didn't seem to be the chatty type. She didn't mind that, although it was a marked change from his older brother. How could those two be from the same parents?

Of course, it was hard to see how either of them could be from the mother she remembered meeting via that horrid portrait. Perhaps Sirius attempted to avoid getting screamed at by physically avoiding her, and Regulus did so by letting her think he was under her thumb. Some people just shouldn't reproduce. She mused for a while about how well eugenics would be received in the wizarding world. Probably not very well. The inbred morons who needed to be kept in check were the ones with political power.

Regulus would eventually have political power, assuming that Sirius was disowned again and that she saved him from being killed. He could be a very good contact to cultivate. Unbidden, an image of Sirius as a young adult in Harry's photo album came to her mind. She kept a straight face. As a bonus, if he was anything at all like his older brother, Regulus would be a total hunk in a few years. _Bad girl, that's not a reason to consider saving someone from a dark lord. _

A polite clearing of a throat brought her back to the real world. Intentionally clearing her mind, she rearranged her priorities until she wanted a quiet place to read… but a place that would impress Regulus. When a door slid into existence and she walked in, she was more than a little surprised to see bookshelves full of novels- many that she recognized as muggle classics. _I did not expect muggle books to be something to impress Regulus. Perhaps they're for me? _The room was cozy, and she only saw one big, fluffy couch. Probably the strangest thing… was the small snake curled up in front of the fireplace. He looked around curiously, avoiding the snake by a large margin. He did, however, keep one eye on it while he scanned the shelves.

_Is this the universe's way of telling me to show him I'm a Parselmouth?_ Amused, she quirked a one-sided smile. _I guess that might impress him… It would invalidate his mother's propaganda about how muggle blood is diluting magical talents. There's no way for him to know I'm anything other than a muggleborn. I just won't mention the part where I got the ability from Voldemort in a past life that hasn't happened yet._

Decided, she strode over to the sleeping serpent and stroked down its back. She heard a gasp behind her. The snake was jewel-bright, and that usually meant an animal was poisonous. He probably thought he was about to see a girl die. The snake stirred slowly as she hissed, **Hello**, **beautiful**. It didn't bother to look at her when it replied, asking for her to heat the room up. _I guess there is variation in how intelligent snakes are. This one had a lower vocabulary than the basilisk._

"Well, I didn't expect that".

She snorted, walking over to put more fuel into the crackling fireplace. "I didn't expect her to be here either. This is the Room of Requirement- it gives you whatever you were thinking of when you were outside. I was thinking about a comfortable place to read. I suppose the snake was a bonus." The flames rose. "She was cold." Iris turned to look at the first year behind her. "Don't tell anyone about that, by the way. Talking to animals bothers people, apparently."

She spent several nights over the last two weeks of school reading quietly with Regulus on the other side of the couch. He was strangely quiet and very reserved, but Iris liked him. She kept expecting that he might ask her why she cursed James to help him. He never did, which was a relief because she could not think of a satisfactory answer that didn't require copious amounts of explanation she was unwilling to provide. She noticed that he never seemed to be reading out of his actual textbooks. The volumes he poured over were either novels, philosophical texts, or in French beyond her reading abilities. Frankly, she was impressed. Hermione would have crawled over broken glass to have a friend with his interests and intelligence. Friend was, so far, a strong word for what they had. But it was much more than she'd expected from someone who Sirius had bitterly accused of being taken in by pureblood propaganda. She suspected that he hadn't been taken in at all- Regulus was taking the path of least resistance. He asked about Sirius once- just once. After that, he didn't have to because she made a point of casually mentioning anything interesting Sirius had said or done that day.

She was almost regretful when their quiet sessions ended and the inhabitants of Gryffindor tower made the trek to the train to go home for the summer. This summer was the first time she'd have Viktor and Fleur together, and that thought lifted her heart while she listened to the girls in her compartment argue over a game of cards. _Time to get some horcruxes._


	15. Unkind Assertions Made About Voldemort

**Part one of the summer before third year. Hermione is barely thirteen, but I've been getting requests on pairings already. I have an idea of what I want to do, but if enough people agree, I might change my mind. Feel free to drop a line if you don't want something terribly silly.**

_I'll be in the UK as a second string player for the six-team tournament before the world cup in a couple weeks. I thought I would send you my extra tickets- I get as many as I want for spectators. I do not anticipate that the games themselves will be particularly thrilling for you, but it will be nice to see you in person for once, and then you can explain something that's been confusing me about our mutual friend Harry. I have invited a friend from Beaubatons as well- Camillia. I suppose we will be relying on you to give us the grand tour and a place to hide out from the insipid vermin (my coach keeps telling me to use the term 'avid supporters', but it doesn't do them justice) that plague my every step. My proposal with the ministry went through, and I have approval to take the exams to test out of my final levels. I anticipate…_

She stopped reading to examine the tickets that had come with the letter, absentmindedly stroking the brown owl perched in the window sill. "Hey, Lil!" she hollered down the hall. Her sister's answering "what?" from the sitting room was faint, but her tone was clearly interested. "Want to go to the Quidditch cup? I have tickets from a friend."

"What friend is that?" Lily asked suspiciously. Iris tried not to roll her eyes- was she afraid it was James or something? "Vik- I mean Alexander". _It is really strange thinking of him as anything other than Viktor._

"You must be really good friends if you can't remember his name. I'm totally jealous. I wish I had a good friend named Alexander. We'd go to the park and walk puppies together and wear matching skirts and-".

"Oh, shut up, squidface." She studiously ignored the sounds of her sister entering the room, suppressing a smile.

"…Did you seriously just call me-?" "Yup".

"We are enemies now. Just for that, I'm not giving you the password to the floo." Lily smacked the explanatory pamphlet down on the kitchen table and leveled a grin at her sister as the kitchen door creaked open. "I seriously feel like such an adult. We have our own floo address."

"Well, we are bad-ass motherfuckers". Iris reached for a bagel-and missed, thunking her hand on the counter in surprise when Petunia smacked the back of her head. She put a hand to her head and glowered at her laughing twin. Her older sister drawled "What was that you were saying, Iris?"

"I was just arguing with Lily. She said that Professor McGonagall was the prettiest woman she knows, and I was telling her that she was wrong because you are."

Over her sisters "hey!" Iris heard the light laugh that was her confirmation Petunia thought she was full of shit, but was amused enough not to scold her for her language. Petunia set down a couple of shopping bags on the table and pulled out a seat for herself.

"What's that for?" Lily said before crunching into her red apple. "We already have groceries for the week, I thought." Iris snorted. They had enough groceries to outlast a modest zombie apocalypse. Petunia had brought home a downright shocking amount of snack food the last time they went grocery shopping. It had been Iris' turn to go with her, and she remembered her aching arms quite well.

Petunia pulled the bag open to show the girls. "Sun screen and swimming suits for the two of you, and two pairs of trunks for those boys you hang out with. I'm assuming Severus doesn't have a set, and I don't know if wizards go swimming starkers or what, so I thought it best to be prepared so I don't have to take that call from the pool."

She continued over Lily's squeal and gracefully gave up the bag when the twins snatched at it to see the swimsuits. "The local pool opens up tomorrow. I thought that you two might want to spend some time there this summer, so I bought household membership and registered us, plus your friends. Your job is to make sure no one tries to go in the pool stark nekkid or in robes or whatever they want to do."

Lily held up a blue one-piece with white swirls and beamed. "I find your lack of faith in Sev disturbing, but you might be right about Remus. You are much better than Professor McGonagall, I'm sorry I ever maligned your good name in that conversation Iris made up." She switched her focus to her twin. "Are you okay with having the green one? I like this one a lot."

Iris didn't bother to look at it when she responded, "Yeah, that's fine. Hey, Petunia- I got tickets to a Quidditch tournament from a friend. Do you want to come with us? I have six. It's in two weeks, Friday and Saturday." She eyed the two pairs of boys' trunks, wondering if Remus actually would wear them. He was a little body shy. _I bet he'll fit into one of my t-shirts. I just have to find a plain one._

Her sister frowned. "Quidditch? You mean that game we saw, with the flying? I could come Saturday, but that's too late for me to take off work on Friday. Why don't you ask those boys when you floo call them? Surely one of Remus' parents can escort you on Friday. If not, you'll have to find another adult or stay home. And by adult, I mean either someone who pays taxes, not some seventeen year old you go to school with. I wouldn't saddle some poor kid with watching you little monsters all day. You should ask your friends today."

She'd barely finished speaking before Lily got up fast enough to almost knock her chair over, flung her arms around Petunia near-violently and then skidded out of the room to sit in front of the fireplace. Amused, Iris walked over and hugged her older sister in a more dignified fashion. "Have I ever told you how awesome you are?" She murmured.

"Yes, yes, all praise me. Could you let me up so I can start tea?" Once settled, Iris watched her sister move around the kitchen, chin in her hands. "I actually wanted to talk to you about this summer- I'm going to be working quite a bit to pay for my expenses during the school year, so I wanted to talk to you about how we're going to keep you ruffians busy. Are there any trips you want to plan for? I was thinking about going to the zoo sometime this summer. There's also a dinosaur exhibit scheduled at the museum next month, I already took off a Wednesday for that. Anything else?"

Iris bit her lip. "Nothing that I can think of, that sounds really great. Does that mean you expect us to have friends over frequently? Because there is two other people I'd like to spend time with. Both of my penpals are going to be in the country for a while this summer." She was going to spend time with Viktor and Fleur regardless of what her sister said, but the less sneaking she had to do, the better.

"That's probably fine. I'll want to talk to their parents first, though."

It didn't take too long for Severus to come through the fireplace. He and Lily settled down at the kitchen table and Iris went to floo call Remus. As it turned out, neither of his parents were available for that Friday either, but he was more than willing to go to the pool tomorrow. He had an idea about getting adult supervision- and it choked Iris up with giggles to realize that her sister was going to be really crabby if it worked out. She ended the connection and waited for Remus to call her back with confirmation. He'd recalled off hand that James was planning to go to the tournament with his mother, and thought to ask if they could tag along.

Mrs. Potter had felt a bit of trepidation about watching so many children until Iris remembered that Fleur was almost certainly going with her parents. Not many people would let their twelve year old travel overseas to a ballgame alone, after all. As it turned out, Fleur (or Camillia, as Iris reminded herself) would be attending with her twin Apolline and their parents. Her mother would be in the VIP section and unable to supervise, but her father was willing to help supervise their flock of children.

* * *

Four children with substantially more sunburn (and freckles, in Iris's case) than they had at the beginning of summer stumbled through the floo at Potter manor on the Friday afternoon when the first games were to be played. Wide-eyed, James took in his friends. "You people actually went outside?" he asked dramatically. "I figured that you would all sit inside and read until someone dragged you out.

Lily smacked his arm. "Hilarious, Potter. I'm glad to see you didn't "

Remus chimed in, "He isn't that far off, Lily." Sev rolled his eyes so hard Iris was surprised she didn't hear anything before Remus continued. Those two just really did not click well with James. "We've been outside mostly. I would have you know that we did our reading at the pool. It was great."

The first game was spectacularly boring, as far as Iris was concerned. James did a fair bit of shouting and jumping around in his seat. Remus and Severus, on the other hand, were utterly paralyzed by their proximity to the two half-veela girls with their glaring father in the row behind them. Iris nudged Fleur and whispered her observation that it looked like puberty had leapt out from the trash bins and hit Remus with a hammer. Poor boy. His voice had actually already started cracking and moving down. Sev and James still had squeaky little boy voices (and when she thought about it, Iris was suddenly struck by the contrast of how strangely low Sirius' voice had been as a second year).

Viktor's team was in the second round, so that was less dull. Of course, he was sitting on the bench. He'd griped about it being a compromise- apparently, there was some worry about a fifteen year old participating at such a dangerous level, even with parental permission.

Iris was a little disappointed by the woman who had been Harry's grandmother. Dorea Potter was prim and quiet spoken, but in a way that bespoke of sternness rather than a shy nature. It wasn't entirely because she was focused on the game, although she was watching intently and occasionally engaging in commentary with James. She seemed less than enthused about sitting close to the twins. Iris wasn't sure if it was because she wasn't fond of children or because the two were Muggleborn, but she had sneaking suspicions due to the fact that Mrs. Potter was much more welcoming of the other children. Apparently, in her book, werewolves and vela ranked above muggleborns.

Though she was disappointed, Iris was less than shocked. Dorea had been a Black before marriage, after all, and her marriage to a pureblood man probably wasn't accidental. She spent some time wondering if Mrs. Potter had ever warmed up to Lily in the original timeline. It was very hard to dislike Lily when you got to know her- she was reminded of someone's declaration that "to know Lily was to love her."

Wasn't it Remus who had said that to Harry? _I wonder if he and Lily ever had a relationship sometime before she ended up with James. _She stole a peek at him, noting how he was awkwardly trying to focus on the game but getting distracted by the four girls around him. Apparently, once he'd noticed one pretty girl, he realized he was surrounded and was shocked into wariness. He looked as though a group of tigers was slowly moving in. She pressed her lips together, hoping that she didn't look that ridiculous when she looked at boys. Lily hadn't noticed, but the other two girls definitely had. Apolline seemed to be teasing him by seeking out eye contact and making faces.

Lily squealed, dragging Iris out of her thoughts. "Oh look, Alexander gets to play!"

Confused, Iris tried to find him by following where Lily pointed. "What, why? I thought he was just a reserve player today."

James fixed her with a cross look. "You haven't been paying attention at all, have you? Their seeker got hit with a bludger a few minutes back. She tried to keep playing, but she passed out and fell off her broom." He glowered, as though this occurrence were a personal failing that showcased her lack of dedication to the sport, rather than a physical reaction to a concussion.

"What a quitter" Sev dryly added. Dorea Potter snorted in an unladylike way, and fixed James with a stern look when he opened his mouth to comment.

"She will be fine. I like this replacement. 'E is very good-looking. I love these foreign boys.", Apolline chirped.

Iris enjoyed the awkward silence that declaration caused. She caught Fleur's eye, who soundlessly mouthed "she did that on purpose". They grinned.

About fifteen minutes into the third game, Iris was so sick of Quidditch that she thought she might be ill if she had to stay another moment. She and Fleur got permission to go look around the concession and souvenir stands. "Going down stairs is much more enjoyable than going up them" Fleur commented, jumping two steps at a time in an ungraceful manner that seemed utterly at odds with her usual demeanor. The sudden diminish in accent was a bit surprising, which Iris chided herself for. Fleur had lived in England for years; of course her accent wasn't as pronounced as her sister's.

Iris laughed, copying her friend's movements and nearly falling over. "I don't even notice stairs anymore, living in a tower does that to a person. At first it was terrible. You can tell the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws from the other houses, because they have beautiful calves. Every last one of us has calves like granite wrapped in silk."

Fleur 'hhmmd' non-committedly. "so… Hermione? Where is Harry? Viktor has been unable to answer that question either."

Iris rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. "That… Well, that's an excellent question. Thing is…. Remember how the spell we used was meant for three people?" The disdainful gargoyle look Fleur gave her could have shattered a mirror. "um, yes. Of course you do. Well, it could have been much worse. I mean, it could have been that Harry or someone got left. All four of us came back. But Harry sort of…. Ended up sharing headspace with me. We're both here. In one body. Say hi to Harry, Fleur."

Fleur stumbled and swore. And then she swore some more. And then she swore a little more, with creativity and fervor. The adults around them were giving them a wide berth and disapproving looks. Iris' face burnt, and she desperately tried to stop her brain from translating the bit about rodents and sticks of candy and glass jars. She grabbed her friend's arm. "Let's go… talk about this elsewhere."

Fleur calmed down about ten feet away. After another twenty seconds of walking, she managed to modulate her breathing, and gave Iris a serious look. She lowered her voice and stepped close to ask, "What does this mean? Does this mean you are now the one who must kill the Voldemort?"

Iris shrugged. "Well, technically, that prophecy hasn't been made yet. So long as we either change things enough that it doesn't happen or get rid of him before it does, we should be fine. At this point, I think anyone can kill him." She felt a chill as she made the unpleasant realization, "if we don't finish this before that happens… I don't think I'm eligible for the prophecy. It'd be out of our plans. Sure, we'd have done most of the work… but we'd still have to wait around for baby Harry." She looked at Fleur, feeling ill. "And that might mean Lily would…" she couldn't even say it.

Fleur took pity on her and didn't comment on how stupid she'd been. "It will be fine," she said firmly. "We will just have to work quickly. This summer, in fact. Tomorrow, after the last game we will meet with Viktor at the restaurant we discussed."

Iris nodded. "Right. Actually, I think we're going out with some of his teammates. Don't mention that to the boys we're with, by the way. They aren't coming and I don't want any hurt feelings about that. Anyways, talking at dinner will be impossible. But we can all come over to my place afterwards and talk when my sister goes to sleep."

Fleur looked as though she had swallowed something sour. "My parents will be absolutely delighted about me spending the night over with a boy."

Iris laughed. "We won't tell them, of course. We'll get permission for you and maybe your sister, and Viktor can come over later. That seems like an age-appropriate scheme." They stopped at a particularly flashy stand and she picked up a bag of candy. "I don't know about you, but I don't participate in nearly enough of those types of schemes."

* * *

Saturday night, Lily and Apolline fell asleep a little before midnight. The three adults were amused but grateful as Iris levitated them into bed. "This means we have to camp out in the front room, I put your sister in my bed," she warned Fleur. The French girl waved her hand dismissively. "Viktor-" "Call me Alexander," he interrupted. "I have gotten used to hearing that. Actually, we should get in the habit of using names that would not seem strange. Our real names might be appropriate when we are sneaking around, but not in your home."

A bit dazed, Iris agreed. "Um, anyways." She set her drink down and drew her knees to her chest. Frowning, she began again, "We need to start our treasure hunting project, and soon. We have no way of knowing if some of the items are in the same places or even if they've been made yet. Actually, that could be good, considering we never found them all. We know that he had a thing for Founder's objects, and we didn't find anything that would represent Gryffindor or Ravenclaw… but that's the only clue we have for whatever we didn't find. And it might be because he didn't find anything for them."

"You're rambling".

"Right, sorry Alexander. I sincerely doubt that the locket has been made yet, since Regulus was the one asked to hide that. He's currently like, twelve, so I doubt he's a loyalist yet. Same for Bellatrix and the cup, although she's much older…. And he found the cup years ago when he was right out of school. So it probably exists somewhere. We'll have to investigate that later. The snake definitely hasn't been made a horcrux yet. The diary… was with Lucius Malfoy. The problem with that is that it was made while Voldemort was still in school, so it definitely exists. It could be that Voldemort actually gave it to Lucius' father or mother for safekeeping and he simply inherited it. That might explain why he did something as stupid as give it to Ginny Weasley- he didn't know it was so important. Really… we only have to find a couple, and stop him from making any more."

"Well. That's a perfectly depressing list of things we don't know for sure." Alexander propped his feet up on the coffee table, hands on his stomach. "What can we actually get? Best case scenario, the locket and cup aren't made yet, and the diary is at the Malfoy place. What does that leave?"

Fleur sighed. "I suppose… there is that horrible gaudy ring with the creepy rock."

"The one that killed Dumbledore." Iris said quietly. "That one… frightens me. But you're right, that's where we need to begin. We could also investigate the cave where he hid the locket. He'd known about that place for a long time, he could have simply moved items as he found trustworthy people to hide them."

Fleur stood up, brushing off her dress and making her way to her slippers. "Well, there is no time like the present." The other two stared at her.

"Are you serious? We haven't prepared anything." As soon as she said it, Iris felt stupid.

"And what exactly is there to prepare?" Fleur asked archly. "Perhaps a letter to the Voldemort, a falling rock trap, a good alibi? We answer to no one. If an adult happens to notice that we are not where we are meant to be…. Well, they will make up their own lie. We were rendezvousing with a cute boy," she jerked a finger at Alexander. "and we are _oh-so-sorry_ Papa, eet will never happen again. He promised us champagne and told us we were pretty in the moonlight". She looked at her fingernails.

Enjoying this thoroughly, Iris added "And if we need to slip away again…" She widened her eyes sincerely and clasped her hands in front of her chest. "We are in love! I am not a child anymore. You cannot stop us." She assumed a serious expression again.

Looking smug, Fleur commented with a sense of finality that "there are plenty of reasons foolish teenagers sneak around. We have no problems."

Alexander snickered. "I am glad that I make such a great alibi. If only I had known that was such a marketable skill, I would perhaps not have become a Quidditch player again. Come, let's go."

* * *

Between the three of them, it was a matter of minutes to tear through the comparatively mild defenses around the ring horcrux. Iris wasn't tricked into cockiness about their curse-breaking compared to Voldemort's abilities- she remembered that the compulsion placed on the ring was the real defense.

However… sometimes complicated problems required simple solutions. All three of them had stopped at a convenience store before leaving the city and bought cheap, stretchy gloves. A curse that worked through skin contact couldn't work if there was no uncovered skin to touch. It was an easy precaution, if you already knew what you would be facing.

Alexander pocketed the ring with a distasteful expression, after slipping it inside one of the fingers of his glove. "Shall I just hang onto this, then?"

"I suppose. I don't have a shortage of basilisk venom, but we don't know if Riddle will notice if part of his soul poofs out of existence. My guess is that it would be painful, and it's better not to risk it. Even Voldemort can only be so thick."

As it turned out, Voldemort hadn't done any remodeling on the cave Harry and Dumbledore had gone to. Iris was mildly amused at how cramped and shitty it was. "I see why he expanded this, and added a lake."

Fleur looked around what there was to see… which was very little. Fifteen-year old Alexander was tall enough that he had to bend over to avoid the ceiling. "This is nice."

'It's a total shithole" Alexander said bluntly. "What kind of petty idiot views this as a good place to hide a piece of their soul? I mean, sure, if you make the horcrux something innocuous like a rock. Then this would be a great place. But using gold jewelry defeats the purpose of choosing an inconspicuous hiding spot, such as this hole in the ground. He might as well have used the declaration of independence and let the Muggles protect it, if he was going for drama."

"I think you hit the nail on its head," Iris commented, "when you said the word 'idiot'. Although you left out 'impractical' and the bit about how he has delusions of grandeur." At that point, Fleur snorted something that sounded like 'Lord, my ass'.

Iris valiantly chose not to meditate on Fleur's ass and continued "Anyone arrogant and wasteful enough to defile incredibly valuable items of historical import with pieces of their soul… Well. They already have problems. Although when you realize that he sees this place as the site of an important victory because this is where he first tortured children, you sort of realize that Riddle has an interesting relationship with reality and what is and isn't impressive that goes back a long ways."

Fleur snickered. "Yes, we are all very impressed. What a big man, re-living the glory of playground triumphs. And this person wants to subjugate the world?"

"He'd be pretty bad at it." Alexander commented. "I mean, he couldn't even keep track of important details like remembered which of his servants had strong ties to enemies. Any competent dictator would've written Snape off as a loss and killed him to be safe. This nitwit couldn't administrate his way out of a paper sack".

"And on that note," Iris said, turning and delicately finding a foothold onto the craggy bluff the entrance had been hidden in, "we should go home and get some sleep. Alexander, you are going to your hotel, yes? Otherwise, we will have to bribe Lily not to say anything to my older sister. That will take more chocolate than I am prepared to part with."


	16. Oh, Bollocks

_Chapter 16_

The floo whooshed and chimed angrily as Remus stepped through, shaking shaggy hair out of his eyes. "Don't let Petunia see that, she'll drag you off to the hairdresser." Iris smacked her gum, and eyed him from where she was flopped bonelessly on the couch. He moved to sit beside her, but ended up just resting against the side of the couch when he noticed Lily's bedroom door opening. "That's mildly alarming. She needn't worry. My parents will take me to the groomer any day now."

"Woof" Lily dryly added. "It's just us three today. Sev can't come." She stood in the doorway, already in her swimming suit and jean shorts and looked at her lazy friends. "Hurry up and change, you guys. I want to get to the pool sometime before our alien overlords come and start picking off stragglers".

"Say what now?" Remus said blankly, his red towel from home limply hanging over his arm and almost dragging on the ground. "Do I want to know?"

"Just get changed." Lily bossily shuffled him into the bathroom and reminded him "your shorts should be hanging on the towel rack". She turned as the door shut, hands-on-hips and regarded Iris. "Well? Are you going to swim in your knickers?"

Hermione didn't try to hide her amusement, knowing damn well that Remus could hear their conversation. "I thought I'd swim stark naked, actually" she declared calmly. "It's the best way to get the pool to ourselves".

"It'd be the best way to convince Petunia to eviscerate you, you mean". Lily tossed her hair. It caught the light from the modest window above the couch and her hair lit up like a dying sun. Iris caught her breath. God, her sister was gorgeous. She felt fierce pride. _My baby sister. My baby sister has such a bloody imagination and excellent vocabulary._ _No one is going to fuck with her… Voldemort can bite me._

"Alright". She acquiesced, done teasing her sister. She swung her legs over the side of the couch and hastily changed in her room. A quick check in her mirror verified that she looked like a lion, and she pulled her hair back with an elastic tie. Prudently, she put an extra on her wrist. Her hair occasionally broke hair ties. Unlike her sister, she didn't bother with a cover-up. She simply fastened her towel around her waist and slipped on flats. Her sister favored flip-flops (_or thongs_, she thought amusedly) but she didn't like wearing shoes she couldn't either kick off or run in.

Her shoes were new, actually- she'd invested some of the ridiculous profit from selling snake parts back into her wardrobe. It felt a little shallow, but it wasn't as though she could go about naked. Besides, she'd gotten a whole slew of supplies for the coming year- a pensieve, some seriously whack dark arts books with promising information, and all of her school supplies to boot. The rest of her money had been hidden- getting away from her sister long enough to set up a Gringott's account was harder than she'd thought. It would be difficult to explain where all her money was coming from.

_I suppose I could pull a Fred and George and set up an owl-order operation selling pranking supplies and such_… the thought of claiming their inventions as her own made her feel a little guilty, but that was ridiculous. Not only were they not born, but they wouldn't begrudge her the use of their ideas-unleashing untold chaos on Hogwarts was practically their life's purpose. _And imagine what Lily and Severus could do with their potions genius if directed towards mayhem instead of improving boring things like swelling solutions_…. She cackled, holding her hands in front of her face in claw-life contortions.

"Is… this a bad time?"

She snapped her hands down and grinned at the two wary teenagers in her door way. "Nope!" she chirruped in a painfully bright tone. "Everything is wonderful."

It was punishingly hot that day, and they actually spent most of their time at the pool in the water. Usually, they spent almost as much time laying on their towels and letting the sun bleach their books. The girls tag-teamed Remus at the edge of the pool at one point and wrestled him into the water. Iris wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he let them- and she wasn't solely that basing that assumption on the easy way he grinned and dragged both of them in on top of him in a slick pile of kicking, giggling kids. Of course he was stronger than them- not based on gender, but the reality of his lycanthropy meant that his wiry frame contained a lot more lean and eager muscle than a boy his size and level of inactivity usually would. Although they were quickly hitting the age where he would have more upper body strength fairly as well.

It was just Remus… but the reminder of how out-of-shape she was disconcerted her. Especially so when she remembered how even Harry (comparatively weak and underfed as he was) had easily been stronger and fitter than she was now at the same age. _Even Harry_? , the male part of her brain indignantly asked. _What's this about 'Even Harry'?! _She wisely ignored that.

The next morning, Iris got up at five thirty, had a glass of orange juice, and went on a mile long run. Then she threw up because that was overly ambitious and the acid was sloshing around in her stomach. She went back again and didn't try again until ten am, figuring it was better to ease herself into a fitness regime. That run went slightly better, although Lily mocked her red face when she came back. She attempted to convince her sister to work out with her. Lily went with her on one morning run a few days later, and then decided to swear off exercise completely, on the grounds that "I don't like running because working hard sucks". Iris felt there was something very wrong with that logic, but she couldn't actually disagree.

In a few weeks time, a mile was no longer the challenging trek it had been and she mapped out a new route, feeling smugly accomplished. She'd accomplished other things, too- she and Lily had spent quality time with their sister on their planned zoo trip (where Iris studiously ignored the snakes cat-calling). Lily had pouted that they weren't allowed to invite other friends, but Iris smacked some sense into her (this is about us spending time with our sister, not our friends who we live with 9 months out of the year) and the day had been a smashing success.

They had also made a tentative foray into do-it-yourself home decorating without magic and had managed to create (using their mother's super retro books on home wizardry, pun not intentional but also not apologized for) a passable set of curtains that framed the sliding glass door and made them look quite a bit larger than they actually were. Severus was not as impressed and deferential as was appropriate, but Remus oohed and ahhed at the correct times when Lily threateningly brandished the vases she'd painted in their faces. Iris noted that perhaps they should make friends with another little girl- the cultivated machismo among their closet friends was only likely to become more pronounced. Petunia soothed ruffled feathers by promising to keep their tiny plants alive while they were gone (although it probably would have been easier to let them die and buy new ones the week before the girls came back).

Iris suddenly understood why Lily had been so reluctant to give up on Petunia in the first timeline and had tried to reconcile up until the week before she died. Hermione had been an only child, and Harry certainly hadn't had a close relationship with Dudley. Neither of them had really understood what it was like to have a sibling you'd kill for. If Petunia had been anything like this when Lily was small, she wasn't the kind of friend a person wanted to lose. Petunia was rather like James in that she was fiercely partisan to the people she believed deserved her love, and completely unforgiving of anyone who earned her displeasure. When their father had distanced himself from the twins out of fear, he had lost all three of his daughters. The twins met with him for dinner several times over the summer, but Petunia only accepted brief phone calls and checks from him.

They only ventured into the wizarding world one more time that summer- a carnival near Godric's Hollow that Remus insisted they absolutely had to attend once in their lives. Iris wasn't quite surprised when they spotted James and Sirius hiding from responsible adults under a table. The two had shot off like bottle rockets towards the woman juggling fire when Mrs. Potter turned her search in another direction.

Their group didn't bother heading into pursuit of their troublemaking fellow students. They wandered for a while and played several carnival games, then went to check out what sort of rides they had to choose from. While they debated, Lily single-mindedly bulldozed a path through the crowds towards a stand with funnel cake. The peace was not to last- soon enough two grinning brunettes were literally dragged by their ears to the food area and deposited with stern instructions that probably didn't even disturb dusty brain space when they wandered in the left ear and out of the right.

"Remus! You dog." Sirius clapped him unnecessarily hard on the shoulder and ignored the retaliatory punch. James joined by trapping him with an arm across his collarbones that secured Remus to his chest, and then ruffling his hair. While Remus struggled and sputtered, Lily and Severus rolled their eyes and escaped into the crowd. "Oh no!" James declared. "There go two out of your three lady friends. We didn't scare them off, did we?"

Iris sighed, folding her arms and looking bored. She fixed James with a stern look. "Boys, knock it off. Unless of course you've been jealous and are just manhandling Remus as a covert way to steal cuddles, in which case I totally understand. But that's just not how these things work. He's a fine specimen- you don't just hold down a man like that to make him love you. You've got to romance him first. Then you hold him down." She paused. "Are you both going to romance him at once?" Then she took a moment to imagine them two years older and smiled. It may have been slightly more predatory than she intended, because James looked confused and slightly violated.

Sirius hmmed contentedly and cuddled at (the word 'with' wouldn't be an honest interpretation of the situation) his captured friend. Remus made a revolted sound as Sirius rubbed his nose lovingly against Remus' cheek. As it turned out, when he was really determined, Remus could escape all kinds of holds. He wiggled violently, knocking his head into James's nose and dropped to the ground to escape Sirius' tender affections. Sirius wailed dramatically and snatched at him once more, but Remus swatted his hand off, unmoved. "That didn't sound remotely rape-y" he commented dryly, making a cursory attempt to fix his hair before giving it up as a bad job in disgust. "I suppose there's no point in asking if you nitwits matured this summer."

"Yeah, that was a stupid hope", James easily agreed. "what were you thinking? I didn't know you were an optimist. Summer has been great."

Sirius nodded, "yes, amazing. For example, were you aware that no one is trying to make us read things? I know you might have gotten a little confused and accidentally learned some things over the summer- but there is actually no reason to learn. And that is great. I support that."

"Actually", James cheerily piped in, "there isn't even an impetus to wear real clothes most of the time. I wore my pajamas for three days in a row last week. The Holyhead Harpies ones". Even Sirius eyeballed him strangely at that. There was a moment of silence before Remus found enough courage to reply.

"Er, mate?"

"Yeah?"

"I would not confess that in front of a lady. Or your mum. Not that she isn't a lady, of course, but she might actually smite you if she remembered just how foul you are. And it isn't going to help you out with other ladies, either." James startled a little and looked at Iris.

"Oh yeah, I forget that you're not a guy. You're not really a girl the way your sister is." He ruffled his hair and grinned at her, apparently unaware that death was winging his way.

Actually, punching him would be playing into the masculine camaraderie he apparently expected from her. She merely narrowed her eyes and tossed her hair over her shoulder as she turned away to catch up with her sister. Her hair tosses were less impressive than her sisters' (Petunia had tutored the twins on sassy body language, would fit in on hair commercials. Lily had nearly achieved the same level of mastery and could only look to improve) but it got the point across just fine.

From behind her, she heard James' 'Ow!' and Sirius' whispered "Are you daft, man! Did you see that hair-flip? She's going to kick your sorry arse later."

That was encouraging, but Remus' barely stifled laughs were less so. She mentally commanded him not to say a goddamn thing about the time she'd had him act as a critic for her sassy hair-tossing and varying levels of contemptuous smirks. That would severely undermine the effort. In her experience, it only took one silly thing like that to totally ruin your credibility. Only one incidence of talking aloud in gym class about how you would one day be Emperor of Space, or mentioning that you wrote a love poem to your cat, and people wouldn't forget it for like, ever.

Her thigh began to burn. Alarmed, she slapped at it, and felt the heat coming from a small, circular point in her pocket. _Oh. It's the communication coin_. The concept had been so useful in past that she'd handed one to Viktor and Fleur before they separated for the summer. She worried at her lip with her teeth, suddenly aware of just how many people were around and how close the boys were behind her. Usually, the heat meant that she needed to look at it for a location and apparate there to talk or help with something, but she certainly couldn't do that here.

She sped up and changed direction once hidden in the crowd, heading away from the rides and towards a copse of trees. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of Sirius' head bobbing along in the same direction it had been before, now to their left and behind instead of directly in front of them. _Assuming they don't look for me and don't meet up with Lily and Severus right away (which is unlikely, because they're probably already on a ride) then I have a few minutes to slip away._

She was jogging at this point, and broke free of the crowd. The sudden fresh air was exhilarating, as was the sensation of wind moving again now that she wasn't in the midst of a bunch of tall buildings and stands. Somewhat casually, she took the coin out of her pocket and held it up to examine it in the light. *_ .MOWH* The message is from Viktor, and just for me._ She squinted at it, trying to remember what the following letters signified. They'd taken each other through side-along apparition to several points that would serve well as rendezvous points and assigned them each a four letter code.

The precaution was almost certainly unnecessary- even if the coins were stolen, and the thief happened to be hostile, and happened to know the group was resistance, they were still very unlikely to think the small galleon was anything other than currency. However, Hermione was very much of the school of thought that there was no such thing as excessive paranoia about things that could lead a death eater to the rest of the group when she was leading a team of three school children against a genocidal lunatic in ways that required them to break the law. **Constant vigilance,** bitches.

_MOWH_… _Generally, the letters actually stood for the way we'd talked about the location. And this was one of Viktor's, so not France. Meadery? No, meadow… Outside…_ She concentrated. _I swear I almost remember- yepp, I got it._ She remembered the location as a meadow outside a small town with a name apparently beginning with a 'W' (so she was told, she couldn't see the town from the spot) in Hungary. She frowned. _Ew, that's going to be cold_. She looked down somewhat sadly at her bare legs and arms. Nonetheless, she held her breath, closed her eyes to more easily visualize her destination, and **_popped_** away just as James and Remus pushed through the crowd fifteen feet away with a grinning Sirius behind, looking right at her and opening his mouth to speak. "Hey I-" _Was that Sirius? Oh, bollocks, _she thought.

"Oh, bollocks", she said. Viktor blinked. "That happy to see me? I feel so thankful." He stood and began to slip his arms out of his coat. "I forgot that England would be so warm this time of year that you would be almost naked. A thousand apologies." He held the brown fabric out to her, and she stopped rubbing her palms on her arms and slipped her arms into it instead. She melted into it happily and zipped as far as the garment went. "Oh, you already warmed it." She flipped the collar up, covering almost up to her nose. "And I am nowhere near naked, thank you very much. My people have this item of clothing called the 't-shirt', and one called 'shorts'. We use them for religious ceremonies".

He bowed his head slightly. "I am sorry if I offended". Though the words were joking, his tone was serious. When he looked at her again, she saw that his expression was as well. "I need you to take the ring." Surprised, she opened her mouth to speak but he waved a hand and continued. "I am… not dealing well with this Horcrux." Shame was evident in his voice. "It… calls to me, at night. I woke up with it in my hand, about to slip it onto my fingers. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, and I fear that the next time I fall asleep I won't be able to keep away from it."

Iris felt the blood rush out of her face. "well.. I guess we don't know much about its properties," she said quietly. "After all, Dumbledore activated the curse immediately by putting it on. It could be that you have a particular sensitivity to it…" he turned his face away. She continued reassuringly "Or it could be that you are especially resistant and that if I were to take it I would put it on in a moment of weakness and we won't even be having a conversation like this one". She drew her wand. "I think we need to cut our losses and destroy it."

He nodded. "That makes some amount of sense. I was going to suggest that you take it… but you could be right and it would affect you just as strongly". He winced. "Or any of the girls in your dormitory. That would be… most unpleasant. Do we need to contact Fleur about making this decision?"

"That would probably be the best. If nothing else, we all three need to keep our ears to the ground to see if there's any hint about whether or not he will sense it being destroyed". She took out her wand and looked at it for a moment. "Patronus, you think?"

Viktor took out his watch and narrowed his eyes, mumbling under his breath. "That would be fine, I think. She shouldn't be in her classes now".

Hermione carefully focused on her recent revelation about how wonderful it was to have sisters and to really belong. She remembered how protective Petunia was, and how clever Lily was. She couldn't help but smile as she flicked her wand and intoned 'Expecto Patronum!' The smile was almost instantly wiped out when the silver pouring out of her wand and gathering in motes of light didn't assemble into a cheery little otter, or a majestic stag.

"How odd… Is this some kind of cat?" Viktor shrugged, not nearly as interested as she was. She took a moment to examine her summon, twisting her head as she walked around it to see all the angles. "I've never seen a cat like this before." It was about two feet long sans the curled tail, with what seemed to be disproportionately long legs and neck, but a rather small head and enormous ears. It gazed impassively back at her as though questioning her intelligence, and she flushed, trying not to feel embarrassed that her patronus seemed to think she was slow. "Message for… Camillia. Vicky and I think we need to take care of Tom's present early–the one we got not to long ago. Just a heads-up". She flicked her wand to the side, releasing the cat to race off and then settled down to wait.

Viktor sat beside her and offered "I think it was a puma." He frowned. "No, that's not right at all. "It starts with a 'C'." She frowned. "Well, that might be helpful." With a sigh, she cuddled into her friend's side, attempting to share her heat with him since he was now only in a button-up shirt. "There are only so many species of wild cat. Even without seeing the coat pattern, I should be able to find it. It was rather uniquely proportioned. I wonder why my form changed?"

Viktor snorted at that. "I wonder why indeed," he sarcastically mused. "Could it be that you have matured or changed as a person? Or done something strange, like merged the personalities of more than one human being?" She punched his side. "Don't be a git." He rubbed at his ribs jokingly. She sighed. "I suppose that was obvious and I deserved that."

"Yes."

"I just… I don't feel that different." She looked up contemplatively. "Maybe I'm confused about what it was really like to be Hermione and what it was like to be Harry." She put her head between her knees. The next words were both quieter and muffled. "Much less what it's like to be Iris. Or maybe that's all I know. Just how to be Iris."

She felt an arm slowly slip around her waist and hold her closer in a hesitating, gentle grip. "I am… sorry for making fun. I suppose that Fleur and I cannot really understand what you… what you two are going through." She sniffled and turned to smile up at him. "Thanks… I get confused sometimes. I.. Hermione is the dominant personality most of the time." She frowned. "Or rather, what Hermione is now is the dominant personality. But sometimes I get whispers from Harry or emotions that aren't how I'd respond. It's a little unnerving to not really know who you are."

At that point, she heard a whisper and looked up to see a patronus- Fleur's little bird- forming. "That is fine," it trilled softly. "I wish you luck." It paused. "Nice cat, by the way." As it faded, Hermione and Viktor got to their feet.

"How do you want to do this?"

Viktor looked askance at her. "Why are you asking me? I have never destroyed a horcrux. Do you happen to have any venom on you?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't carry that everywhere."

"Well, our choices are limited. You can carry it back with you and destroy it before you go to sleep to minimize the chances of possession, or we can attempt to use Fiendfyre." He grimaced. She rather shared the sentiment.

"I've never used that, and I might prefer never to." She looked around. "Certainly not somewhere with so much fuel to burn. I suppose I will take it back to England with me." Gingerly, she took the proffered glove. "It's still in here, then?" She felt around it, eventually finding the ring nestled in a fingertip. "Okay, got it." She sighed. "I guess I'd better get back, then. I don't want to be missing for too long." He held out his arms, and she stepped into a hug. Breathing in his scent, she mumbled into his neck "Do you need your jacket back, then? Because my showing back up at a summer carnival in a man's coat can only raise questions." He snickered and released her, holding out his hand. "I'll take that, then."


	17. Back to Class- Third Year

_I'd like to ask a general question about the quality of my writing so far. I haven't used a beta- no one else sees this before I post it. Do I need to start using one? Obviously, I haven't noticed major issues that I haven't fixed, so if everyone is just rolling their eyes at me I have no clue. Thoughts, comments, anything of that nature?_

_I've been a little surprised by the requests for pairings so far. I think I'm going to have to go with what seems realistic to me, probably using pairings I already like. To that end, she does not have a 'one twooo love' thing going on. Thusly, she's going to go through more than one relationship, relationships of different sorts and possibly go back to someone. Because real, lasting, quality relationships don't just fall out of the sky and tap two people on the shoulder. Someone who is perfect fifth year may not be what she needs seventh, etcetera. And yes, I know it is too early to actually start, but I like to work these things into the plot, so I need to plan ahead._

_I'm glad people are apparently enjoying this. I've had nothing but time to work on it, since my laptop is broken and I'm using a rental without my other projects on it. Cheers! Aren't you glad my fan broke for an inexplicable reason certainly unrelated to my dropping my laptop? Twice?_

**Year Three **

Ms. Lupin was exactly as wan, intellectual, and introverted as Hermione remembered Remus being when he taught at Hogwarts. Unlike the adult Remus, however, Melodia Lupin had no lack of self-confidence. Melodia was an aggressively beautiful woman, with an attitude to match. Hermione actually found the woman rather intimidating. For some reason, Hermione had forgotten that Remus was raised only by his mother, if she had ever known in the first place. She briefly wondered if Ms. Lupin was divorced, a widower, or had never been married, but definitely did not think it wise to inquire.

Now that she'd met the woman and felt the aura of sheer _don't-give-a'damn_ this woman emanated, Remus's casual, offhand comments about her many suitors made sense. As did Remus's impeccable manners and good behavior- Hermione wouldn't want to mess with this woman, either. Although it would be fair to say that Melodia devoted little of her attention to mundane things like shopping, when she actually was paying attention, her gaze was laser-like, and absolutely an unnerving experience to have focused on a person.

As Petunia had been too busy to take the twins to the station, the twins were staying with the Lupins for the night and going with them to the train station in the morning. The girls had very little shopping they needed to do, but Remus was collecting all his books and potions supplies tonight.

Luckily for Hermione, when Melodia took Remus to collect his textbooks for the new school year, Melodia thought nothing of letting Iris wander off to put in an order for new robes for the twins. She would only be gone about ten minutes, after all. If Ms. Lupin had known exactly what the child in her care was planning, she probably would have used a sticking charm and handcuffs to keep her under supervision. Hermione could only conclude that despite her piercing gaze, Melodia Lupin was not a practicing legilimens. Or at least, if she was, she wasn't practicing it on her son's school friends.

Iris hadn't actually been lying about making an order for more clothes- the girls never seemed to have enough. The errand actually only took a few minutes, and then Iris slipped away through the crowds to a deserted alley. With some concentration, she glamoured herself and then disillusioned herself, placing a notice-me-not charm just to be thorough. It would be sloppy to be seen where she was going, and she was sadly without an invisibility cloak. She thought wistfully of the garment- it would make her life so much easier.

_There is no use in whining about impossibilities_, she scolded herself. _Pay attention to the crime you are about to commit. _

With only a moment's worth of straining to visualize the chamber under the ministry of magic where she had seen shelves full of time turners in her past life, Hermione oriented herself and popped nearly silently to her destination.

She immediately dropped low and checked her surroundings. It hadn't exactly been possible to call ahead and ask about their office hours, and she'd last been there in the middle of the night. Luckily, however, there appeared to be no one about the department of mysteries after five pm.

Orienting herself took some time. Apparently, quite a bit of experimentation on time travel had happened in between the seventies and the nineties. When she finally found what she was looking for, Hermione was a bit dismayed. The time turners weren't quite where she remembered, and there weren't nearly as many of them. She remembered hundreds of glittering vials of pale sand- but she only saw about fifteen hourglasses filled with a light blue sand. They were also shaped slightly differently than hers had been.

She took a minute to evaluate the artifacts, and was relieved to find that the changes were mostly of aesthetic preference. These older models would work as well as hers had, as far as she could tell (and she was probably as much an expert as any person other than the maker of time turners).

The low number of hourglasses in the mahogany case, however, was poor luck. It would be much easier to notice one missing this way. She bit her lip, straining her brain for the best solution. There was nothing for it- a time turner would be an absolutely invaluable resource. She needed one. She picked through her pockets, searching for something innocuous she could transfigure to look like a time turner (and then took a moment to imagine some hapless ministry employee being baffled when his time turner reverted to an eraser).

As it turned out, the best that she had was a receipt for her schoolbooks, and THAT would just be stupid to leave here. Once it inevitably lost its form, they would know to investigate students of her year. Granted, they would probably suspect the parent or older sibling of the student who had bought the books, but it was just best not to leave clues laying around that would spoil her great cover as just some kid.

Instead of transfiguring a fake, she first picked an acceptable artifact from the shelf. After she had slipped it around her neck on the gold chain she'd worn for this purpose, she duplicated the time turner to the left of the empty space and nudged the fake into place. She purposefully overpowered the spell- she didn't want this noticed for as long as absolutely possible.

With any luck, the ministry would assume the thief had been in their employ, as it was impossible for someone who hadn't been in the department of mysteries to get in without going through ministry security. She quirked a smile. Just their luck that they were dealing with someone who had information from a break-in over a decade in the future. There's no way to predict that.

_That's not very sporting,_ Harry wryly noted.

_That's sort of the point. The Ministry can kiss my ass._ She sensed the mental equivalent of an intangible being chuckling before Harry slid back down in her consciousness.

She cast a quick 'homenum revelio' in a wandless pulse around her to make sure she hadn't been seen. _Oh yeah, I'm cool. I feel like a superspy._ When no one showed up on her radar, she apparated back to the same alley she'd left perhaps ten minutes ago, removed the concealment charms she had utilized for the brief venture, and then used the purloined time turner for the first time. Eight minutes earlier (and perhaps two minutes after she'd first walked into the alley) Iris strode out and met her sister and the Lupins outside the bookstore as they walked out, Melodia still counting change from the register. Remus looked incredibly bored and restless, his hands utterly caught up in carrying his enormous bags of books.

Things went smoothly after that. Iris was highly conscious of the stolen property on a chain around her neck and the horcrux ring in her pocket next to the communication coin, but she managed not to fidget while the small group ate dinner in the alley, picked up the robes, and then went back to the Lupin home. The ring especially made her nervous- Remus seemed uncomfortable and confused whenever she got close. She worried that perhaps he was sensing the horcrux. Her sister didn't notice anything at all. Lily was fascinated with Melodia, who patiently endured her attentions.

Iris was actually very curious when they arrived at Remus' childhood home- she had never seen this house in either lifetime. It was a relatively large house in the country, with a strange, windowless metal and brick building nestled between two trees that Remus carefully didn't look at on their way in to the actual house.

Hermione was a little impressed-it was a pretty secure set up for a werewolf to transform in. The house itself was isolated enough that neighbors were unlikely to complain of the noise, and the strange building seemed to be both secure and plenty large for a big predator to prowl around for a few hours. Lily gave what Hermione was mentally referring to as 'Remus's building' a curious look, but was too busy chirping academic questions at Mrs. Lupin (who was apparently an absolutely brilliant witch, published in multiple scholarly publications) to ask about what looked like an ugly barn.

The inside of the house was nothing spectacular, but it was reasonably nice. It was shockingly cold inside the house, however, which was an unpleasant shock to the system. It was very hot outside, and the change was jarring. Melodia appeared to think the concept of 'interior design' extended to wall color and how the bookshelves were arranged.

As they toured the house behind his mother, Remus snuck one of his new books out of his bag and flipped through it while he walked and made appropriate sounds at the correct intervals. Hermione was about as impressed with his sneakiness as she was with the house itself. Though it was severely lacking in personal touches like pictures, the Lupin home was strangely attractive and comfortable. The colors were charmingly bright- blues, greens, and reds took front stage in the kitchen, hallways, and sitting rooms, respectively. Past the (orange!) restroom and the closed door that led to Remus' room, Melodia pushed open the next door.

"This is where you'll be staying." When the lights flickered on, Iris and Lily pulled their trunks inside the spare bedroom, beside the large bed they'd be sharing for the night. Iris used the back of her hand to wipe the sweat off her brow, trying to slow her breath. It was far too hot for manual labor of any sort, she thought miserably. Even though she was chill now, she was still sweating from the exertion of getting her trunk into the house. She mentally groaned at the realization that she would have to get it out and to the station tomorrow. Even with the lightening charms, her trunk was unwieldy and too big for her to carry.

Beside her, Lily flopped down on top of her own trunk in a sad slump of little girl, panting. Fluttering in with a bundle of blankets to make their stay more comfortable, Melodia gave her son a disapproving look. "Why aren't you helping your friends carry their things, young man? And are you packed for the morning? I don't want you reading until you have everything else taken care of." He started guiltily and closed his book, setting it down gently on a side table before going back outside to fetch heavy bags of clothing.

Iris went back out to help, but he'd managed to get all of the bags on his forearms, apparently under the impression that making a second trip would prove that he had some form of weakness. It certainly would have been less effort to simply make two trips.

Since she wasn't needed to actually carry anything, she merely held the door open while he staggered in, nearly buried under the weight of Lily's new uniforms and shoes and their dressy robes. She didn't comment, but she was amused.

Ms. Lupin retreated to her bedroom almost immediately, as though she was uncomfortable with the extra children in her home. Lily turned in similarly early, leaving the other two reading in the front room late into the night. Remus was possibly awake to be polite or because anticipation and excitement about going back to the castle kept him alert.

Though she worried she was keeping her friend up, Hermione didn't want to stay awake, but felt that she had to. He eventually passed out in a curled-up position on his comfortable armchair. She didn't sleep at all that night- too frightened to leave herself vulnerable to the ring tied in a handkerchief on the small table to her right, within arm's reach.

Staying awake was very difficult- it was the second night in a row that she hadn't slept, because she'd gotten the ring from Viktor yesterday. She distracted herself by re-packing her trunk and sneakily casting even more spells on it to make it easier to move. Leaving in the morning was going to be even more enjoyable than bringing her belongings in had been. Iris considered helping out her sister by stuffing her robes away, as Lily still didn't have everything that they had bought that day packed into her trunks. She ended up leaving well enough alone- Lily would want to be able to find her own belongings when she unpacked.

* * *

The train station was as packed as ever, sweaty teens and grumpy adults all jostling to get closest to the red engine. Remus and the twins waited patiently in the haphazard line for their turn to load their luggage on board, but they could see teens pushing and budging ahead of them.

Melodia's upper lip curled. "Honestly, you'd think they were raised by wild pigs". She turned to her son, and briskly hugged him goodbye, whispering something in his ear, and then withdrawing just enough to give him a kiss on the forehead. "I'm going to take off- I have to get back to work. Behave, you three, and have a wonderful school year. I expect a letter once you've settled back in, love". She fixed Iris with a stern look. "And you could stand to write your older sister more frequently. If Lily can write weekly, you can as well". With that, she stepped backwards and apparated away with a little twirl.

Iris sputtered indignantly. "I write home plenty!" Lily giggled. Remus self-consciously smoothed down his bangs and muttered something darkly about how he wasn't the one who misbehaved. Lily broke the awkward semi-silence, taking the next stab at conversation. "Well, I really like your mom," she said brightly. "She's super rad."

Remus's left eyebrow trailed disbelievingly up his forehead and he shook his head slightly. "I just… No. Just no." He cleared his throat. "Hey, is that Sirius?"

Iris turned to see where he was looking. It was indeed Sirius, walking close beside Walburga Black (likely not by choice, as she had her fingers wrapped tightly around his upper arm), looking so angry he was practically vibrating with repressed emotion. Regulus trailed his mother with his head tilted down, looking uncomfortable and tired. A man who was likely their father walked supportively beside his wife, looking at his older son as if Sirius was dog shit on his shoes and not deigning to glance at Regulus at all.

Now that she was paying attention, Iris could hear hints of Walburga's raised voice. She grimaced. _That fucking bitch._ It looked like she was berating Sirius, likely calling him names in an attempt to make him miserable as long as possible for the sin of not being the son she wanted. The son that Walburga wanted, however, looked just as eager to bolt away from her and hide under the train until she left. _Good parenting- a gift that just keeps on giving. _

Iris reluctantly turned her head away from the argument, knowing that Sirius wouldn't want his embarrassment to be public knowledge. That was probably why Walburga was haranguing him here- much like the theory behind Mrs. Weasley's bright idea of sending her children embarrassing howlers at breakfasts with hundreds of their peers (she thought Molly Weasley was a bit of a jackass as well) "We'll catch up with him later," she said quietly. Her sister, pale and unnerved, nodded in agreement.

The wait felt much longer than it must have been. Eventually, the double doors slid open a moment before the whistle sounded, alerting all and sundry that the train was ready for boarding. Of course, because wizards make no sense at all, there was only a fifteen minute window for all of the students to get on board, and only one door. The students slowly trickled inside, and Lily bounded off ahead to claim their usual compartment.

The train ride was dull as dirt- by now, Iris was absolutely sick of what had once been a novel experience. She dodged Sirius and James on the actual train by hiding in the ladies' room-Remus had jokingly confided that Sirius had the bizarre theory that he'd seen her apparate and had managed to convince James as well. She was glad that Remus thought they were being ridiculous- if he didn't believe it, they were likely to retroactively doubt Sirius's sighting.

She hadn't been doing anything really wrong- as an emancipated minor, she was allowed to perform magic outside of Hogwarts- but it would be simpler to not have that conversation at all. (the fact that she was apparating without a license was a minor matter at best- worth a five galleon fine). However, there wasn't really a way to mention her emancipated status without bringing up facts about the lack of relationship between the twins and their parents. Iris wasn't that hurt, but Lily was. Her pain was no one else's business, as far as Iris was concerned.

After she was sure the boys were settled in their own compartment, Iris left the lavatory and slipped back into the compartment she'd settled her sister in. Severus had found his way there, as had two chipper looking girls that could only be prospective first years.

It was impossible to keep the smile off her face when Severus gruffly explained how the sorting actually worked to the girls sharing their compartment (Melanie and Kalla?). They were somewhat disappointed to hear that there wasn't a single dragon involved, but were happy to disprove the theory that they would be required to drink poison and be timed as they made an antidote. Hermione was reminded of Severus' riddle guarding the stone when he crabbily declared that anyone setting up a test like that was an idiot. Lily was bemused, but Severus was almost indignant- "who on earth makes up these stores?" – at the wild claims the girls claimed to have heard from older relatives.

Lily and Severus somehow got talked into telling the younger students about what Hogwarts was actually like. Iris flipped open her Defense against the Dark Arts textbook, wondering what the professor for this year would be like. She couldn't help but remember that in her third year they had covered possible threats other than the standard 'bad wizard' idea. Curious, she looked through what the book listed- there were indeed creatures like pixies and centaurs in the syllabus, and even though she half-expected it, she was more than a little offended to find werewolves listed as a magical creature (not on page 394 in this edition, however).

She was just boiling up a good internal rant on the differences between belonging to a different species and having a disease when they arrived at their school. Wisely, no one else bothered her when she slammed her book shut and actually threw it into her trunk. Their group of three found a carriage and climbed in, waving goodbye and good luck to the girls they had met.

The dark-haired little girl they'd met, Kalla Grinsby, ended up a Gryffindor and her blonde friend Melanie Pritchin cheerfully meandered over to the Hufflepuff table. She didn't recognize anyone else. Somewhat wistfully, she wondered when her older friends would make it to Hogwarts- Bill and Nymphadora were both born, certainly. The math she did in her head occupied her for a few minutes, and she tentatively came to the conclusion that Bill (two years older than Tonks) would be coming to Hogwarts something like three years after she and Lily graduated. _What a bummer._

She was torn from her thoughts when one of her roommates poked her with a spoon, asking about what electives she'd chosen. Iris tried not to snort- she wasn't likely to be in the same ones as her roommates. As it turned out, in the seventies the flying lessons that had been mandatory for first years in the nineties were an elective- Magical Sports and Games. She supposed the thought was that it was like physical education, only for people who were concerned about stupid first years falling to their deaths when they tried to show off. If the idea was to avoid getting sued, it was probably a good idea to only include students who've probably already learned how not to die on a broom.

Lily had turned her nose up at the offering and opted for Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and an introductory Healing course, but Iris wasn't that concerned about the need to take hard classes. She didn't have to have taken a class to take the OWL test for it, and she already knew all the material from having taken Ancient Runes and the other difficult classes in her first life. The professors were likely to be disappointed in her lack of initiative, but Iris had only chosen two electives- Care of Magical Creatures (the Hagrid-free experience was bound to be novel) and the sports class.

Her roommates made the appropriately baffled faces, but politely let the matter drop. Iris's thoughts were actually several floors below the Great Hall in the Chamber of Secrets, where she would be able to destroy the horcrux and read through her taboo books. She was relatively certain that she had found the ritual she would use to make a body for Harry. It was actually intended to be a sort of basic golem, capable of limited thought and taking orders.

The charms part of the construction was relatively straightforward, but the first stage utilized potions, which wasn't her strength. Harry was rather creeped out by the idea, remembering Voldemort rising from a smoking cauldron. _Tough cookies, because this is slightly less controversial and difficult than murdering someone with an appropriate body._

They had actually found the recipe Voldemort had used- or they were pretty sure they had, anyways. It was a foul thing, involving impregnating an unwilling woman with the twisted simulacrum that would form the base material that the secondary potion would modify.

Their recipe was simpler, and only slightly controversial in that they would need a small amount of blood of the two people the golem would use as DNA guidelines (though the dark arts book certainly didn't use that terminology). It was possible to get by with just one blood sample, but that would result in a golem identical to the blood donor. Mixing two samples would essentially cause the golem to go through the same process of mixing traits that actually having a child the regular way would. Hermione hadn't spent a lot of time agonizing over who the blood donors should be- if she was going to do this, she may as well do it right.

She was a little lost as to how she was going to actually get the blood samples- no one in the wizarding world would give blood samples up, knowing how they could be used against them. It looked as though asking might not be the best option. Although she was generally all-for treating her fellow students well, she felt that borrowing a bit of genetic material was an important enough cause for the universe to cut her some moral slack. She was probably going to steal it.

The weight of the time-turner around her neck was comforting when she slipped out of the silent, dark dormitory. She didn't feel that she was likely to be caught wandering the halls after dark, but it would be nice to be able to turn time back far enough that she had plenty of time to rest after she destroyed the horcrux. She was bone tired, after not sleeping the two nights since she'd gotten the ring from Viktor.

Once she was actually in the now-clean chamber (basilisk remains tucked away in a side tunnel), Iris rejoiced once again in her utterly brilliant deduction that stairs had to exist in the entrance. She set the ring down on the floor, letting it fall out of the fabric she'd wrapped it in. It clanged sadly and rolled twice before giving up. It was such a pretty trinket. And so very powerful. Stupid Riddle hadn't even known what a treasure it was when he took it from his uncle and defiled it with his dirty little soul. So very pretty, and special. She reached for it slowly, mind consumed with just how crisp and golden it was. It was rather like the Greek apple in that way. Harry roared in her head. **_No!_** She staggered, confused. _It's in your goddamn head, Hermione! Don't listen to it._

Eyes wide, Iris dropped to her knees and backed away, ending up on her bum. She had very nearly put it on. She had very nearly died. Hyperventilating a little, she tucked her head between her knees and tried to calm down. _Calm down,_ Harry soothed. _It's going to be all right._ His tone changed to amused. _Aren't you glad the voice in your head is looking out for you? _She barked a laugh, feeling a bit better. "Yeah, I need to take care of this right now so that I don't end up owing you any more favors."

She drew her wand, not bothering to get up. She was closer than she'd like to the damn thing anyway, and although knowing that Harry could help her was lovely, she was still less than keen to end up under the horcrux's siren call again. "Accio bottled basilisk venom!" She deftly caught the bottle with her left and popped the cork off with her teeth, remembering being told never to do that by those sissies in St Mungoes after one of her hospitalizations. Ha, shows what they know.

On her knees and one hand, she crawled just close enough that she could position the open vial over the ring that glinted up at her almost angrily. It seemed torn between trying to invoke fear and pity. It wasn't a terribly effective combination. A savage smile pulled at her face as Hermione poured the entire vial of poison directly onto the ring. "Because fuck-you, that's why," she declaimed rather triumphantly.

Said declamation might have been a little hasty. A harsh shriek erupted from the tiny ring and she threw up her hands in shock, the glass bottle flying behind her. Hands pressed to her head, she watched with wide eyes as the ring shook violently, clattering noisily on the stone floor and spewing black smoke tendrils like a goddamn fog machine. Then the fog coalesced into a horrible gaping face, and she decided it was time for a tactical retreat.

Exactly as she shot to her feet and began to step backwards, the ring actually exploded, shattering into hundreds of tiny metal (and stone) slivers. She cried out in shock and pain as several hit her, leaving scratches, and in one case, digging into her flesh below her shoulder and settling in her skin. That would have been an excellent detail to note. Unfortunately, the bloody pinprick path the metal or stone had made going into her skin looked much like any of the dozens on her torso, neck and arms.

Woozily, she wavered for a moment before falling to her knees and then leaning forward, trying to convince her body that now wasn't an excellent time to throw up. She collapsed to the left in a semi-controlled fall, ending up in the fetal position on her side and shaking uncontrollably. Not just shaking, shivering. "I don't feel so good," she moaned, despite knowing there was no one there to hear her. Harry was silent in her head- she could feel that he was struggling just as much as she was._ I'm so very cold. Maybe.. Maybe I'll just lay here for a moment_, she decided. Just a moment, and then she would get up and go to bed.

As it turned out, she didn't rest for just a moment. Iris laid on the chill, damp stone all night, and she dreamt of fire.

Faces moved, screaming and crying. There was no air to breathe- only smoke and vapour that curled up in her mouth and cooked her lungs from the inside. The house was burning, and good riddance to muggle filth. How dare they speak to her in such a way? Anger was settled cold in her belly, and she felt her face stretched in an unholy rictus of a grin. Soot settled on her teeth and she breathed in cooking flesh merrily.

The fire was gone. She was in the orphanage, sitting on her bed and listening to the brats next door cry because they were hungry. She sneered, fingering her wand and thinking of ways to shut them up.

She deserved this. No, she deserved better. All the haughty well-bred idiots who had looked at her with disdain were bowing to her now, and she took great pleasure in searing her mark into their flesh if she accepted them. If she didn't accept them… well, who would begrudge her a little target practice? Not that she needed it of course, but her little apprentice deserved live test subjects. Bellatrix Black was the closest she'd ever found to an equal- never actually an equal of course, but the worthiest servant she'd found. She so eagerly soaked up the directions Iris gave her- yes, Bellatrix would be a fine lieutenant. The world was not enough- but it was good enough to start, and these pureblooded scions would help her take it for her own. A dark chuckle rose to her lips, coming out strangely masculine in a way that tugged at her memory as being impossible. Wouldn't these kow-towing fools be so delighted to find that they had no place of power in her perfect world, once they'd helped create it?

Hermione came to with a whimper, curling up as tightly as she could to push away the cold seeping into her bones and grabbing her with fiery fingers. She hurt so much, she hurt everywhere and her skin was crawling with remembered heat and what felt like foul insects. Was she ill? She slowly moved a hand to her head, feeling confused when her arm scraped against stone. Had she fallen out of bed?

No… she'd never made it up to bed. She struggled to her feet and cast a tempus charm. "Oh, hell," she rasped. Six am, and she felt as though she hadn't slept at all. She had such bizarre nightmares, dreams about killing people and.. and.. they hadn't been dreams at all. Her vision wavered. She had …what, visions of Riddle's life? They had ranged from early Hogwarts years to what had to be within two years of the current date.

She retched bile onto the floor, empty stomach contracting miserably. Something had gone wrong. She cast a look over at the remains of the horcrux. It was definitely destroyed… Iris wracked her aching brains for an answer, and thought of nothing. Fighting nausea, she healed the tiny scrapes in her clammy, pale skin and staggered towards the entrance, pulling her time turner out from under her blouse as she went. Oh. Walking and fiddling with anything was a bad idea.

She stopped and concentrated on her artifact, setting it to take her back as far as possible. Unfortunately, that was only six hours. But if she made a good pace, she would make it back to her dorm room by fifteen past midnight and have about seven hours to sleep before breakfast. Seven hours was a lot better than no hours. She spun the device, and recast the tempus spell to check everything had worked correctly. She carefully did not look behind her as she staggered away- she was probably laying on the floor behind herself, and that would just be unnerving to see.

Not quite as unnerving as having Riddle's life flash before her eyes, her mind commented. "Oh, shut the hell up," she told herself. "No thinking about that now. Sleep, and then thinking will happen."

It was a miracle of near Christ-like proportions that she managed to get back to Gryffindor tower in one piece and without getting caught by any staff or prefect. Iris stepped out of her skirt and shakily pulled off her blouse. That was as far as she got- she was far too tired to finish getting ready for bed. Trembling uncontrollably, she peeled back her covers and slid inside. She had intended to try to check on the strangely silent Harry, but it wasn't to be. Nearly instantly, she fell back to a sleep that was thankfully more restful than the one she'd had on the stone floor of a 40-degree (f) chamber.

* * *

The sun came up with obnoxious rays, as childishly insistent as it always was that it was time to face yet another day, but Iris didn't move and morning was a blur. She heard the sounds of girls talking and the shower running, but Iris pulled the sheets further over her head and pressed her face into the pillow, utterly miserable. She didn't feel quite so deathly ill as she had last night, but she was still quite faint. When she didn't stir from her cocoon after ten minutes, she felt the bed depress on her right and Lily's hand gently shaking her shoulder. "Go away," she croaked. "I feel like death."

Lily pried the comforter off her head and gently tilted her face, using the back of her palm to check at Iris's forehead. She inhaled sharply. "You're running really hot. I think you need to go to the infirmary." She stroked Iris's hair. "You're not in any shape to go to class." Iris moaned incoherently in what might have been agreement. She wasn't even sure- her muscles and joints were on fire with pain, and her brain was throbbing inside her skull.

She felt her sister get up, and the voices in her dorm quieted, footsteps slinking out one-by-one. And then two sets came back upstairs-one was Lily, talking quietly, and the other steps were heavier. When she felt herself being rolled over and gently picked up, her intensely logical brain concluded that Lily had found an older prefect to help her to the infirmary so that she didn't have to be levitated there. Levitation was great for trunks, but using it on people was a bummer because people don't like bumping into walls and ceilings with the caster loses focus.

"You're a wonderful sister," she managed to wheeze. "A princess among wine. Swine. Pearls?" She mumbled fitfully, having entirely forgotten where she was going with that statement. "Love you most."

The masculine chest she was rested against rumbled with amusement, and she nuzzled dizzily into it. "Just sleep," a voice commanded. "The healer will be able to help easily."

Lily was clearly still trotting alongside, because she added "I'll take care of your homework and get your note to the professors, so don't worry. I'll take care of all that for you."

As her bones ached with the jostling that came from whoever carrying her walking down stairs, Hermione considered mentioning that it was a nice gesture, but that she couldn't even imagine a universe where she cared about her homework at the present time.

Then she stopped considering it, because that would both sound rude to her kind sister and be a lot of words to force out. Thinking was painful at the moment, and speaking was much more so. Her dazed mind half-remembered a comic strip joke about a society for the conservation of syllables. She should be conserving those now. Conservation was important.

In what seemed like far too short a time for the trip, Iris heard the tone of her sister's voice again (though it was muffled as if she was hearing through cotton instead of ears) and felt herself being lowered onto a bed. She grabbed for the covers, running her hands along the soft surface, and collapsed all muscle tension. Essentially, she settled onto the bed with as much control over her body as an overturned bowl of pudding.

She must have spent the entire day there. Hermione woke up in bits and pieces- sometimes noting the sound of the door opening and shoes clicking on the hard floor, and at other times rejoicing in the ache slowly fading from her bones. She heard someone in women's shoes coming towards her, and the curtain around her bed being opened. A hand settled on her forehead. "Are you awake now, Miss Evans?"

Huh. That definitely wasn't Poppy Pomfrey. She frowned. Then she felt like an idiot for somehow expecting that the staff at Hogwarts had been the same for an eternity.

She peeled her eyes open- the somewhat blurry woman above her had red hair and a thin, impatient face that belied her melodious voice. "How are you feeling now? I have absolutely no idea what happened to you- must have caught some sort of Muggle illness that I am unfamiliar with. I treated the symptoms, and they are fading quickly. You are still on fever reducers and pain potions, but if your body continues to fight this off at a similar rate, you will be completely back to normal by tomorrow afternoon." She adjusted the covers and helped Iris sit up.

Being vertical was nice. She blinked a few times, clearing out the mistiness from her vision. "There you go. I'm afraid you've slept through all your classes, but you weren't in any shape to attend them regardless. I am going to release you to sleep in your own dorm, unless you prefer to be here. You'll need to be escorted back to your dormitory if that is the option you choose, of course. One of your year mates happens to be here- do you want him to escort you back, or to sleep it off here? I have your potions packaged up and labeled."

She half-considered asking which one of her class mates was here, but decided against it. The doctor seemed alright and all, but being in her own room was much more comfortable. "An escort to the tower would be lovely, thank you." Hermione cleared her throat a little, deciding it was time to do something about the fact that she was in her underwear and bra (pathetic as it was, it was technically a bra). "Is there anything else I should know?"

She pulled on the loose shirt offered to her- apparently, Lily had brought a change of clothes down. The pants were more difficult, but she managed somehow to get them on while listening to the litany of potion times and that she would not be attending class until after lunch tomorrow. Lunch tomorrow, incidentally, was the first actual meal she was allowed to attend. Incredulously, Iris put a hand to her empty stomach in dismay before the doctor elucidated that she was to ask the house elves for food when she got upstairs.

She barely listened to the medical instructions, now that she was awake again. Her incident of physical infirmity was terrifying- nothing had ever happened like this when destroying horcruxes in the past.

However alarming, the fainting might be the lesser issue at stake. She couldn't lie to herself-her dreams had been visions of Voldemort's life. That could very well indicate a bond of the type Harry had with him. Of course, Harry's visions had only been whatever Riddle had actually been doing at the time- hers had skipped all over his life. That probably indicated they were very different. Was this a one-time thing, or something that she would have to live with? She shuddered.

It suddenly occurred to her that the fact that her visions had been from Voldemort's perspective might be a bad sign. She hadn't just been there- she had felt what she surmised were his actual emotions and tendrils of his thoughts at the times she had visited. She had initially dismissed this as another problem- Harry's visions had always been from Voldemort's perspective. But then, he'd had a curse scar connecting them. She had no such excuse.

Was the fact that she'd already had experience with visions about and from the perspective of a Dark Lord a worrying statement about her life choices and recklessness?

Fully dressed and contemplative, Iris pulled open the curtains and found that the classmate referred to had been Remus. She gave him a smile, giving him a look-over out of curiosity as to why he was in the hospital wing. He looked a little tired, certainly, but not like he needed medical attention. Of course, he wouldn't need it if he were leaving. Then she felt stupid- there was a full moon tonight; he was probably getting a check-up. _I'm a terrible friend for forgetting._

Remus was certainly fidgety today, Iris noted disinterestedly as he led to her to the tower with an arm around her waist for extra support. He'd asked her why she was in the hospital wing, suspecting that she wasn't just ill and that she'd had some sort of magical cause for her sudden, strange weakness. He was probably right, although she had no idea why destroying the horcrux had affected her so strongly. That thought was so worrying that she refused to entertain it at the moment- she'd checked, and the ring itself was destroyed. She'd seen the bit of soul forced out, she was sure of it.

Though she was disinclined to lie to her friends, she didn't exactly consider telling Remus that she'd had some sort of unexplainable accident while using snake venom on a vehicle for a portion of the Dark Lord's soul. Instead, she had pointedly changed the subject to why HE had been in the hospital wing, rightly guessing that he didn't want to talk about it either.

Of course, the evasion probably proved in his mind that she had done something stupid and was hiding it, but that couldn't be helped.

The deflection had pretty much ended conversation of any substance. After that, he rambled for a bit about what she had missed in class and how James had gotten an unfair detention when the herbology professor caught him lurking around the greenhouses with a measuring tape.

She was amused to realize just how suspicious the staff was of the Marauders- who had picked up that nickname at some point already. The unflattering moniker had been bestowed by the staff, as far as she could tell, but they adopted it enthusiastically.

They probably deserved it, especially as it appeared they were already making significant progress on the Map. Iris had helped complete a prototype via discussion in letters over the summer, but then bowed out, knowing full well that the boys wanted to finish it without her. That stung a little, but she wasn't really in their group. Good thing, too- it would be absolutely wrong to involve actual children in her problems, seeing as she wasn't under undue duress. She'd let them pick up arms if death eaters sailed in through the windows on flying carpets, but letting them follow her to trouble was a different cup of tea.

Hermione told herself she wasn't at all bitter about being alone in her troubles, but she was a crappy liar about things like that.

Alone in her bed, she wondered if she should contact Fleur and Viktor about what had happened to her. It seemed a bit pointless- she had no idea what had happened, why it had happened, or if it was done happening. Perhaps if it continued to be an issue she would meet up with them and have that discussion. It wasn't the sort of thing she felt comfortable committing to paper- owls were difficult to intercept, but not impossible. For now, she would simply wait and see.

She rolled over into her pillow with a snort. She couldn't think of a better course of action, but she was aware that her chosen path sounded absolutely idiotic. _Harry, you're rubbing off on me_, she whined good-naturedly. _Perhaps the lack of self-preservation skills is a contagious condition._

Her weakness faded over the next few weeks and she easily got back into the routine of going to classes. Hermione lingered around the idea often, but didn't allow herself to go back into the Chamber. Her thoughts were constantly drifting to her work she should be doing for Harry, but the idea of venturing down there always led her back to the unpleasant litany of dangerous holes in what she knew about her visions and physical weakness.

She tried to distract herself with extracurricular reading, and with spending time with her friends. It was somewhat tiring to go through the motions of wonderment in the world's possibilities and even more horrifying when James discovered he was 'madly in love' with her sister. He'd also somewhat jokingly confronted Iris several times about the apparition incident, but backed off after she completely lost her temper and threw a book at him. Teenage boys were far more irritating than she had previously suspected.

Her sister was of a similar mind on that point, especially in regards to James. Unfortunately, Lily wasn't finding productive ways to channel that irritation. Iris loved Lily, she really did, but her experience gave Iris the perspective to note that Lily didn't have the moral high ground of maturity that she thought she did when she ranted on and on about how James had been absolutely atrocious in some class or another and his hair was stupid. Frankly, thirteen year olds pulling at each other's figurative pigtails were annoying.

Oddly enough, she could relax with Regulus much more readily than she did with her friends. He required no emotional pretenses. While the time she spent with her Gryffindor friends involved a lot of emotional labor and placating hurt feelings, her time with Regulus was a straightforward transaction of words and ideas. The occasional conversation in their quiet reading sessions had evolved past pleasantries and traded information about Sirius to semi-philosophical discussions.

The tradition started innocuously enough while Regulus was putting together an essay on Grindelwald- "Why do you think people pursue power?"

She'd paused to consider. "Perhaps fear? Fear of inadequacy, of not mattering. That might translate from fear of death. When a person considers their own mortality, they begin to wonder why they even exist. Some people accept that they can't understand, or find absolution in relationships, or just distract themselves with their lives because it is too painful to consider. But for some people, that fear might drive them to make themselves matter through influence over other people."

"I was thinking more in terms on control." He'd stared into the fireplace, his profile still and strangely fey in the flickering light and shadows. "Although the desire for control might be based in fear as well. Fear of what is beyond you, and then anger. I was considering why people attempt to control the behavior of others. In things that don't matter like wanting people to agree with you or act like you, I mean, not in things that provide immediate or long term benefit."

She shut her book and leaned back against the luxurious purple cushions of the couch they'd gotten that day. "Isn't all society about controlling behavior? Everything from the insults we use to the way we dress is unnatural- order imposed on chaos in order to funnel behavior in certain ways. And..." she paused, wondering if this conversation was about Sirius and their mother.

She reconsidered the discussion in light of that theory. "It could be that we're frightened and disturbed by the things we don't understand. Maybe it's just safer to deal with things we can't control by getting angry at them or dismissing them. If you admit that things outside of your experience are valid, then you might have to reevaluate yourself. No one wants to think of themselves as wrong or bad, and that extends to how we perceive the world. If there are other valid viewpoints, then we don't enjoy a privileged position of being undoubtedly correct. The death of your convictions might be as traumatizing as real death." At that point, she didn't know if she was talking about Walburga, the platform of superiority that Grindelwald had preached, or her own doubts about the righteousness of her convictions.

Their conversations had only strayed outside of the Room of Requirement once, but it was a mistake they didn't repeat. They had been overheard- it was only by Lily, who had been running behind Iris after going back in for her raincoat. Lily was harmless and agreed not to mention the incident to anyone, but the experience had been enough to remind Regulus just how much shit he would be in if the wrong person knew he'd been socializing with a mudblood.

After that ill-thought out incident, where he'd nodded at her in the entrance hall and asked if she'd considered their previous discussion, they remembered to keep their conversations private and ignored each other in private. It probably wasn't the healthiest basis for a friendship (Were they friends, or just friendly?), but it was apparently what Hermione needed.

When she finally began to work on her Harry project in the Chamber, she made liberal use of her purloined time turner to avoid suspicion. It didn't take her long to settle on the process she wanted. Her intention was to create a simulacrum in the way described, rush it through the stages of development to an appropriate age where it could easily assimilate the mind of a grown man, and then using the pensieve as an intermediary to move Harry's consciousness to the mostly empty vessel. Though she was constantly plagued by exhaustion as a result of her extra long days, she had gotten the first-stage potion ready within three weeks of being back in school.

Her industrious nature on this issue was a mixed blessing- she had only three days from the point she began simmering the solution to acquire both blood samples. Hermione felt like a goddamn vampire, or the wicked witch from sleeping beauty with the spinning wheel when she cast a strong sleeping spell in her dorm to prick Lily's finger for a few drops of blood in the night, but she did it anyways with no one the wiser.

James was more difficult. She ended up cornering him one night while he worked frantically on an essay (even Sirius was done before James). She had guiltily put him to sleep and cast a hideously over-powered Notice-Me-Not charm over the empty common room, a spell so strong that it would lead anyone who tried to leave the dorms to forget there was a way out of Gryffindor tower that didn't involved jumping out a window.

Luckily, no one tried to come downstairs while she made a small incision on his index finger, collected the genetic material she was after, healed the cut, and then memory-charmed James for good measure. It would have been sloppy work and an unnecessary loose end for him to recall her coming down the stairs while he was wide awake and then suddenly being out like a light until morning.

James didn't remember anything afterwards, which was somewhat reassuring. She hadn't practiced memory charms much before. He did, however, seem to subconsciously suspect she had done something to him. Hermione noted several times that he stood slightly farther away from her than before and wavered between discomfort and confusion when talking to her.

The constant reminders that she had wronged James and her oblivious sister were a little painful, but she patiently endured. She didn't regret her actions, of course, but she was a little sorry. James would become more comfortable around her with time, assuming she didn't do anything frightening.

Her conviction to act normally and avoid alarming James further died a fiery death only a few days after she'd promised herself that she would behave. Her defense against the dark arts professor had been wholly unspectacular so far- she had so many of those professors that they all blended together in her mind- but she was startled into paying attention when he chose to bring up vampires, and then werewolves as a topic.

It was all very well and good to teach students how to identify and deal with werewolves (although any wizard who couldn't recognize a werewolf was probably to stupid to live), but the professor went beyond anything rational. She didn't even know his name- he was a fat, balding former Ministry worker, and relatively competent. Trapped in the classroom, she positively vibrated with rage and disgust as he showed picture after picture of dead werewolves and explained the brutal ways they had been killed (though he said 'elimated'). Some of her classmates were wincing- the lecture was unnecessarily gory by any measure, and the man was taking far too much pleasure in describing all the spells and potions that could kill a werewolf. _Probably a coward_, she thought viciously._ Has a phobia, and justifies his hatred by pretending they're subhuman._

Iris couldn't bear to look at Remus- this man obviously didn't know his secret, and he wasn't the type of person she wanted to know about her friend's vulnerabilities. But that didn't mean that she was going to sit and listen to this crap.

With a loud scrape, Iris pushed her chair back and slung her bag over her left shoulder, pulling her textbook to her chest. The professor stopped talking, and the whole class spun to look at her. "What on Merlin's green earth are you doing, Miss Evans?" he demanded. "Sit back down, class isn't over. That'll be five points from Gryffindor."

Hermione had never been one to disrespect teachers, but sometimes that consideration wasn't deserved. She looked her professor dead in the eyes, came to the realization that she would be in detention _for the rest of the year _if she did what she wanted to, and decided that it would be worth it. She inhaled theatrically, and stated bluntly that "I know class is really important and all, but I've just got better things to do with my time and talents. For example, I could go count the rocks on the Quidditch pitch, or shampoo my sister's cat. I'm not interested in sitting here and listening to some jackass yammer on about how to murder people who have a disease. That blood-boiling spell you're so proud of? I wouldn't use that on a goddamn animal, and you're cheerfully telling us it's a great way to murder someone. You're fucking sick."

Her sister was looking up at her with huge eyes and a dropped jaw. Iris stifled a laugh, and carefully kept her attention away from her classmates' expressions. This was fun- strangely sacrilegious, but exhilarating. She suddenly realized why the Marauders broke the rules so often.

She paused, considering walking out then before the man recovered. Nah. _May as well hang for a dragon as an egg_. "Also, you're a goddamn idiot and you don't even know what you're talking about. I don't know who taught you anatomy, but that last picture was a liver, not a heart. If I wanted to listen to an ignorant loser speak, I could accomplish that without paying a knut in tuition." She flashed a cold smile and strode out of the room while he sputtered. The door closed behind her with a **bang**.

Unfortunately, Hermione was only two steps out of the room when she heard an outraged yell. At that point, she immediately abandoned Gryffindor tactics and sprinted- getting caught would ruin the dramatic exit she'd had going. _That was even better than walking out on Trelawney, you drama queen. Who knew you were such a closeted rebel?_ "Oh, shut up Harry. You know that I rocked. You're just jealous of how cool I am".

_I'm not the one talking aloud to myself in the hall_, he retorted.

That point was hard to counter.

She did indeed receive a truly impressive amount of detention, and was called up to the Headmaster's office to be scolded by the DADA professor and McGonagall while Professor Dumbledore pretended to look on sternly. The affect was somewhat undermined by his constant nibbling on cookies. He held her back after the other two left, ostensibly for more scolding.

Had she not known Dumbledore like she did, Hermione might have been terrified. Instead, she cheerily took the proffered sweet and told him she regretted absolutely nothing. He had laughed. Dumbledore probably suspected that she had been defending Remus- it was indirectly true, but Remus wouldn't see it that way. He would be sure that Iris no idea about his condition. She would have hated the foul professor even if he hadn't been victimizing one of her friends, so she didn't feel guilty about letting the headmaster think she had been defending Remus. He was a big sucker for friendship and loyalty, after all.

Her DADA grade plummeted, and classes were a cold war on par with Harry's struggles with Snape. Iris didn't care at all- her grades didn't matter, she was going to wipe the floor with the OWLS and NEWTS regardless. No one would ever care what she'd gotten in classes. Detentions were a long, dull string of nights spent marking essays and writing lines like "I will not disrespect my better". The idiocy of the chosen lines only cemented her poor opinion of her teacher.

The incident wasn't all bad, however- it sparked some conversation. She had become Sirius' hero- "I've never seen anyone talk to a professor like that. Tell me, where do you hide those enormous balls?" James had been similarly awed by her daring, and did several dramatic recitations in the common room for an adoring crowd. However good the outburst had been for her relationship with the Marauders, her sister was less impressed.

Although Lily and Severus had agreed with Iris on principle that what the Professor had been saying was wrong, Lily just couldn't condone treating a professor like that. Iris had raised a brow at that, questioning why it was worse to disrespect someone who didn't deserve your respect than it was to try to brainwash a group of children into believing it was a good idea to murder someone with an uncontrollable condition. Lily had thrown up her hands and declared "that isn't the point!", which seemed like a tacit admission that she didn't have a good response to Iris.

Wisely, she didn't say that. Lily seemed to fill that blank in herself, however.

"Why would the ministry put such horrible things in the curriculum?" Lily had asked, defeated and sad. Severus sneered. "To control what the next generation thinks in order to insure the status quo of relationships between wizards and other magical races stays the same, of course. Indoctrination works best on the young and the stupid. Students are both, and thus susceptible to bigotry. Everyone likes to hear about how they are better than everyone else." Lily had whacked him good for that one, but Iris thought it was a pretty good theory.

Although she hadn't planned her rather public declaration of her opinions on werewolf rights, Iris nonetheless hoped that Remus would see fit to open up to her. After all, he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would support him. Unfortunately, days came and went without a change in their dynamic. Iris was disappointed, but told herself that she was being unreasonable. Even thought he knew she wasn't a bigot, he certainly wasn't obligated to tell her personal information about his medical history. It was an intensely private fact, and he had no reason to want to shout it from the towers.

_I'm being a hypocrite_, she told herself disgustedly. _It's not like I confided in Remus that I have, for all intents and purposes, multiple personality disorder._ She stopped and considered. _Or perhaps schizophrenia, I'd have to research to be sure exactly how best to classify myself. _


	18. The Immutability of Sunshine

_Chapter 18_

This didn't come out as expected- I had intended to get one more scene in, but the chapter just needed to end where it did.  


**The Immutability of Sunshine**

"So, Iris, seeing as how you couldn't be in more trouble if you tried, would you like to misbehave with us?"

Hermione closed her book to look at her grinning sister and swallowed all immediate interpretations of that sentence that implied Lily was suggesting that they do something untoward with Severus. She cringed a little bit on the inside and soldiered on, away from the Bad Thoughts. "I don't know," she said non-committedly. "I could think of a few ways to get in more trouble if I really tried. What do you suggest?"

_Please don't suggest __**that**__._

"I was thinking," she lowered her voice conspiratorially, "That we should sneak out to Hogsmeade, and then to Diagon Alley." She grinned like a hyena- that is to say, in a way that looked slightly unhinged and promised ill news.

_Oh, thank god. They just want to sneak out._

"Why do we want to do that?" she asked levelly. Though the idea wasn't exactly exciting for her, (it was rule-breaking on a level she'd long since surpassed) it wasn't an idea she was particularly opposed to, either. "And when, for that matter?"

"Remember your suggestion for candies that would imitate various illnesses? We've been working on that… Purely as an intellectual exercise, mind," she added with painful sincerity undermined by the way Severus snickered. "We would never be so bold as to encourage misbehavior and chaos."

"Of course you wouldn't," she said dryly. "Because that would be naughty. I'm assuming that you need ingredients?"

Lily nodded in confirmation. "Both alchemical and confectionary." She paused. "Our prototypes… Well, they haven't been tasting like candy."

Sev interjected "the last one made me wish that I were dead. Before the vomiting started." Hermione covered a snort. God, it was so weird to see Severus sassing Lily. It just wasn't done.

Lily snapped at him "well, I told you that the aspertine was a bad idea!" She crossed her arms combatively and tilted her head in a way that usually meant she was considering going in for the kill.

_Is it bad that she shares a lot of body language with hungry predators, like a wolf? _Iris wasn't sure anymore.

He scoffed. "Oh no, you aren't putting the blame for that on me. You certainly didn't have an alternative suggestion, and the cochneal acid had to have _something_-"

"Girls, girls, you're both pretty!" Iris snapped. "Now let's focus on the issue at hand. How are we planning on sneaking out, and when?" (quote taken from Megamind).

The other two looked at her as if she had grown a second head. "Tonight, of course," Lily said gently. "and getting us out is your job."

Slightly indignant as the presumption, Iris opened her mouth to protest. Sev waved his hand dismissively. "You're the sneaky bastard around here, we assumed that you would know how to get out with a minimum of fuss. Or do you mean to say that you have no ideas?" The condescending way he raised an eyebrow at that was almost as shocking as the fact that he'd utilized the silky drawl she remembered from potions classes. _Oh, disturbing. Sev is growing up._

She didn't know if she'd rather laugh or cry.

Iris swallowed both reactions, and chose to focus on anything other than the fact that she was probably going to have nightmares about Potions class. "I suppose I could get us out pretty easily. Do we have a specific destination in Diagon, or are we just going there to have easy access to Muggle London? Because it might be easier to go to London proper first."

She paused and thought about this. "Wear your loosest clothes. I need one of you to bring enough general countering agent for all three of us to have a dose- we're going to want to use aging potion so that no one wonders why three students are wandering unsupervised. I have that, but we'll want to be able to dispel the effects as soon as we get back on campus instead of waiting for it to wear off properly."

"I can get that," Lily said immediately. "Sev, how long will it take you to get back to your dorm and change?"

"Fifteen minutes, perhaps." He looked levelly at the twins. "Where are we meeting- the entrance hall, perhaps?"

Hermione snorted. "That's far too conspicuous. No…." she trailed off, feeling mischievous and alive for once. "Meet me on the second floor corridor by the painting of four unicorns. In twenty minutes or less. Go team, go!" Severus splintered off from the girls at a brisk walk. Anticlimactically, Lily didn't go anywhere. "Why are you-"

"We live in the same dorm," Lily said flatly. "We may as well walk together."

* * *

Hermione had forgotten one thing about using aging potion to hit her twenties- "My bra doesn't fit at all!", Lily hissed angrily. "What the hell are these things even for?" Hermione could hear the sound of fabric tearing and harsh breathing as her sister wrestled with her clothing in the dark of the spare classroom by where they were meeting Sev. "I wore my loosest stuff, and it's ruined anyways! This is crap." Something thudded when Lily kicked it in irritation, and she howled in frustration.

Hermione adjusted her own clothing with a combination of sticking spells and carefully placed inflation charms and then went to help her sister. Poor Lily had attempted to solve the problem by adjusting the cups, but had forgotten entirely that the band that went around her back needed to change as well. Stifling a giggle, she fixed her sister's clothing.

"Good to know we're going to get bustier than Petunia," Hermione dryly commented. This was news for her as well- she'd always been rather flat in her previous life. "Va-va-voom." She carefully examined her sister, tilting her head. "You look so much like mom."

Lily calmed down, and picked back up the outfit that she had thrown in frustration. She snickered a little.

"What's so funny?"

"Sev is going to have problems as well, isn't he?"

Iris stopped and stared at her sister. "No, Lily," she said gently, "I don't expect Sev will be particularly busty." Her sister threw her a dirty look.

"No, dumdum, that's not what I meant. If you give him a similar dosage, he's going to get way too tall for any of his clothing. He hasn't exactly hit his growth spurt yet, by any means."

Iris snorted. This was true- Severus was actually shorter than either of them and had yet to break past five feet in height. This would have been funny even if she hadn't known he'd end up over six foot tall, largely because he just had so much sassiness in such a tiny package.

It appeared that Severus had figured out how to adjust his clothing reasonably well, and would be about six foot one inch when he was eighteen. He hadn't, however, figured out that he'd need to modulate where he looked. When they emerged, he was somewhat wild-eyed. _He looks like he thinks he's about to be skinned alive._

"Wow, you two look like real girls."

Or it could be that he was checking them out. Iris frowned, feeling that she really should be able to tell the difference between when someone looked scared and when someone looked turned on. That mistake had terrifying implications about her sexual education.

She half-expected Lily to shriek and hit him, but her sister surprised her by breaking into a fit of giggles. Iris and Sev looked at her perplexed, as if her craziness was catching. "What, pray tell, is so amusing?"

Lily wiped away tears of mirth and tried to explain, breathy with humor. "The potion didn't affect our voices. It doesn't look so weird for Iris and I, but Sev…" she broke into giggles again. Iris couldn't help but snicker at the horrified expression that crossed Severus' face. "She's right, you know," Iris mused. "You probably shouldn't speak too much when we get outside. That would be a silly reason to get caught." She jokingly elbowed him. "You're going to have to play the whole 'strong and silent' bit, love. A thirteen year old voice coming out of a grown man is a bit conspicuous."

Sev pouted, the expression strangely adorable on his adult face. She nudged him reassuringly. "Come on, let's go loves. We need to get some larger clothes while we are out- this stuff is stretched past its limits, and I don't think any of us want to be standing around when the charms give out. Clothes aren't meant to be patched with magic." (Hermione had been intrigued to learn that all clothing in the magical world was made essentially by Muggle means- magic might move the needle, but it still had to be a real needle using real thread on real fabric of enough size for the garment being made).

The statement didn't seem to reassure either of her companions, but it got them moving through the dusty passageway behind her at a brisk clip.

* * *

Hermione had really needed a night out. The three went from shop to shop, and gamboled like puppies in a park. Play-fighting was strangely fun (although it certainly looked weird) with their new strength and weight. When they tired, the three laid on their backs on the grass and looked up at the stars coming out, bags abandoned around them.

"That was fun," Lily commented breathily.

"Only because you two cheated," Sev grumbled. "Sketchy twins, doing sketchy things."

Hermione huffed in amusement. "I think we're all rather sketchy," she commently dryly. "Or so our erstwhile professors would claim, were they here to scold."

"Ugh, don't remind me." Lily stretched, catlike and languorous. "Do we really have to go back? We could start a band and become hideously rich, or kidnap Potter and sell him to science. We'd never need NEWTS."

"Despite how much potential as that plan has," Sev drawled, "I would think that we would eventually get in trouble when the muggle scientists find out his head is completely empty. I have been laboring under the impression that it is generally considered poor business practice to sell faulty product."

Lily shrugged. "Maybe they'll be able to reproduce the phenomena?"

"Okay you guys, that's enough picking on someone who isn't here to defend himself." Hermione struggled to her feet. Gravity sucks. "Not that he's particularly adept at defending himself verbally in the first place, but it's the principle of the thing. Let's get ice cream and then head back to the castle. I'm tired."

Lily shot up. " Ice cream? Where on earth are we going to get ice cream this late at night?

* * *

It was a close thing, but Iris and Lily managed to make it back to Gryffindor tower without getting caught by any adults. Unfortunately, the common room wasn't empty when they sauntered in.

"Whoa, is it way past curfew," an older prefect announced with a scowl. "What were you two doing? It's… almost three in the morning! Do you want to lose house points?" Lily turned bright red and hunched over a little self-consciously at getting a dressing-down in public. The room was nearly empty- the older prefect and what looked like one of his roommates were sitting in armchairs and writing, and… the marauders, minus Remus, were on the rug in front of the fireplace desperately putting together what looked like transfiguration essays.

"I'm sorry. We have no excuse," Iris told him. She nudged her sister. _As far as he knows, we went for a walk in the castle. That's worth maybe ten points. If he knew we'd gone to London, he'd have reason to give detention_. She had quite enough of that scheduled lately- she was almost done with her two weeks, and she wasn't keen to get more. Harry drawled, _'Then you probably should have stayed in. It's one of the better ways to avoid detention'._

Hermione determinedly avoided looking at that truth, biting her lip and hoping that Lily kept her mouth shut. She did.

The older student shook his head. "I don't want to take points from my house, okay? So don't make me. I'll let whatever you did tonight go… If it was worth it." He flashed a mischievous grin. "Was whatever you did interesting?"

_IT'S A TRAAAAAAP!_ Roared Hermione's subconscious. **_KILL IT WITH FIRE!_** She stopped both that thought and the hand that twitched toward her wand- fiery death probably wasn't the universal solution it'd been in her past life. Lily didn't have the same paranoid instincts, however. Her face instantly brightened now that the danger of scolding seemed to be gone, and she chirped "We snuck out to Diagon Alley for ice cream!"

Iris face palmed. "Good job, genius!" she hissed. The Marauders were staring now, wide grins on their faces. Her cheeks burnt. The prefect looked nonplussed for a second, but when his friend started laughing he did as well. "Okay, that's pretty good." He ruffled Lily's hair and she ducked away, indignantly trying to finger-comb it down. "Just don't do that again. It's dangerous out there- there are reasons we have rules."

"Dangerous?" Lily inquired, frowning. "What's the big deal?"

The older boys looked a bit surprised. "Oh right, you're not really old enough to pay attention to these kinds of things. Supposedly, there's a man calling himself a Dark Lord in Britain. Probably just posturing, but people like that are plenty dangerous for kids. Be good, okay? Or else he'll probably eat your face." He stopped and looked at his friend. "That sounds like something a Dark Lord would do, right?"

"Sounds pretty legitimate, yeah."

"Right. Stay inside, or else the Dark Lord will eat your face and you'll feel sad about that."

"Right… I think we're just going to go to bed. Yeah. Goodnight. Thank you for the warning and not giving us detention." Iris edged toward the stairs, gripping her sister's hand. Then they made a break for it, faces burning with embarrassment when they heard laughter coming from the five boys downstairs.

Lily grumbled as they got ready for bed. "Why the hell were they still up, anyways? I feel a little cheated- we definitely waited long enough that no one should have been downstairs. I bet Sev didn't have this kind of trouble in nice, predictable Ravenclaw. We should have gotten sorted there. Gryffindors are absolutely terrible troublemakers about disobeying things like curfew."

Iris stopped and stared at her sister incredulously. Lily rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, I know, I'm a pot gossiping about those stupid kettles downstairs. It's just hard to be a sneaky troublemaker with so many other troublemakers around."

Hermione laughed so hard that Lily had to hex her silent to keep her from waking up their dorm mates. She only stopped when a sudden, strange pain in her upper chest shocked her. Hand on the spot, she slowed her breathing and dispelled the jinx her sister had placed on her. "What's wrong, Iris?"

"Probably nothing. I just had a sudden pain. From laughing too hard, maybe."

* * *

Apparently, seeing the twins misbehave had upped them in the boys' esteem. Iris was amused to note that James had a rival for Lily's affections- Peter was following her around like a lost puppy. She took a moment to be glad that she hadn't killed him- she might later, but for now he wasn't a particularly bad kid.

For some reason, she had expected that Peter had always been shifty and shy. That wasn't the case- he was almost painfully earnest. It was easier to understand why they'd never even considered that he was the traitor. She ruefully chided herself. If he had been a sneaky little rat for seven years, the boys probably would have noticed.

He sat with Lily and a perplexed Sev at the next table over in the library. Iris had her table to herself- she had enough book spread out that there would be no workspace for anyone else, which was just the way that she liked it.

Iris frowned as someone blocked her light source. Having light was one of those things that made books a lot more enjoyable. She spoke as she looked up. "Hey, would you mind moving aw- Oh, hi Remus." She stacked up her books to give him a little table space. "Here, sit down. You look exhausted." Harry piped in with a reminder that the full moon had been last night. _Oh no, he really should be resting_, Hermione thought fretfully.

He smiled weakly as her. "No, it's fine. I was actually wondering if we could go for a walk. I want to talk to you about something."

Conversation stopped at the other table. Lily and Severus were looking over, intrigued. Peter, on the other hand, was grinning like a loon and flashing a thumbs-up. For one terrifying moment, Hermione feared she was going to get asked out.

_No, that's ridiculous. _Despite her reassurances, Harry laughed like goddamn hyena. _It could be a good idea, _he snickered. _You've always been hot for teacher, and he's much better than Lockheart._

Hermione briefly considered getting more mature friends.

"Uh, sure. Just let me get my stuff packed up. Anywhere in particular?" She scrambled to clean up quickly while still trying to retain a modicum of dignity.

"Perhaps it would be best to go to the common room to drop off your things. Here, let me help." The two of them packed up her belongings and he gamely shouldered her enormous bag, nearly tilting over with the weight. "You should really consider this thing called a bookshelf," he wheezed. "My people use them so that we don't have to carry our texts everywhere."

"A 'bookshelf', you say? How bizarre. How do you know that roving bands of barbarians won't come in and abscond with it while you are out?"

"Sometimes we just have to take that chance. Living with Sirius has also taught me that roving barbarians are less interested in books. They're more likely to go through your drawers, flipping your mattress, and tipping your shoes over looking for candy."

Hermione took a moment to picture that. "Yeah, I can totally see him doing that."

Remus grimaced. "There is no safe place to hide food in our dorm. If you set it down, he seems to assume it was meant as some sort of pagan sacrifice in his name. It's rather disgusting, actually. Have you seen him eat?"

Iris raised a brow. "I thought his parents were all civilized and such, surely he has table manners?" Remus laughed as much as he could under the oppressive weight of her bag. She tapped it with her wand to reduce the weight, and he immediately straightened thankfully.

"No, it's not that. It's more the fact that he eats anything and everything within reach. It doesn't even have to be food. If it fits in his mouth, he'll scarf it down in two seconds flat. He does, of course, use lovely table manners when doing so, but it's hard to remember to appreciate that he utilizes the correct fork when you're seeing him suck up everything in the vicinity like a vacuum."

He gratefully released her bag into her custody at the bottom of the stairs to the girls' dorms. "I'll be right back, just a moment." She padded up the stairs quickly and tossed the bag onto her bed. It bounced and actually flew off the bed, thudding onto the floor with a loud and unpleasant sound. She groaned. "Oh hell, my bag split."

Thinking about fixing it depressed her, so she abandoned it and changed into more comfortable shoes. _I'll take care of it later._ It'll be fine. Grabbing a blue sweater, she practically flew down the stairs, pretty eager to go for a walk outside. It was just beginning to become brisk and chill, which was her favorite type of weather.

"Ready to go?"

"Yes, how about the lake?"

They walked through the halls in silent companionship and meandered out onto the grounds. Sweater now on, Iris crossed her arms in front of her body to keep the wind out, turning her head slightly to keep her hair from getting in her eyes. It still whipped into her cheek a bit, but there's only so much that can be done about that. "So…. What's up?"

Remus worried his lower lip. "There's something I wanted to tell you for a while, but I was worried you would dislike me if you knew. And I know that wasn't fair to you, and I should have told you anyways if we were going to spend time together."

Iris fought to keep her face calm, although she was sure she knew where this was going. She wanted to grin- Remus trusted her! Instead, she carefully commented, "You can tell me anything. I won't even deflect away from uncomfortable topics with humor, just this one time." She uncrossed her arms and slipped her hand into his, bumping her hip into his casually.

"I…" he sighed. "I'm sorry, this is hard. I've never had to tell anyone. But I know you won't judge- not that I thought that you would, but… Oh, hell."

"Hey, hey, relax. Just spit it out." Hermione stopped walking and faced him, smiling earnestly.

"I'm a werewolf."

Even though she had been hoping for him to tell her, Hermione suddenly realized she didn't know the etiquette for this situation. Would it be rude to say she was sorry? Especially since she wasn't really sorry- the alternative to being a werewolf was being dead, and she liked him far too much to prefer that option. He was still waiting for an answer, looking flighty and uncomfortable. She just needed to say something. "I promised not to deflect with humor, so I'm not entirely sure how to respond. I'm not good at emotions." She squeezed his hand. "Would it be rude to say I'm sorry? Would you like one of my deep, dark secrets in exchange? Offer is open. I… Thank you for trusting me with this." She made sure to smile reassuringly.

"Wait, that's it?" Remus said incredulously. "You're not going to ask me how, or when, or tell me I'm gross?"

Hermione gave him a weird look and took her hand out of his. She then used it to lightly smack the side of his head before settling it on her hip. She huffed. "Well, excuse me for not prying up uncomfortable memories with rude questions or telling you that you are gross. I'll be sure to never do it again."

He flushed. "No! That's not what I meant, I-"

She laughed, cutting him off. Then, because the situation was so awkward she dove in for a hug, nuzzling her face into his chest. "You are ridiculous, you know that?" she asked fondly. His hands hesitatingly settled on the small of her back.

"You really don't care," he stated, full of wonderment. "But- that doesn't even make sense. You should be scared of me!"

Iris snorted in an unladylike fashion and pulled her face out of his chest. "Remus, my love, you are as frightening as a wet kitten." She tweaked his nose. "I could kick your ass any day of the week, fur or not. But I won't, because you're my best friend. Whether you are furry or not, as previously stated." She leaned up and kissed his cheek. "I bet Lily would agree you're cuter than Potter, 365 days a year."

"I don't think you understand how dangerous a werewolf is…" Remus withdrew a little bit.

Iris let him go and looked seriously into his eyes. Calmly, "And I don't think you understand how dangerous I am, so we're even. I would do horrible, horrible things to make you happy." She smiled then, brittle and perfunctory. It was true- she would kill to make him happy, and probably would have to at some point.

He didn't seem to have a response. "So, does anyone else know? I'm assuming Peter, based on the way he looked when we left the library. You know, my sister looked at us like she thought you were dragging me off to ask me out."

Remus tactfully ignored that. "Yes, Peter knows, as do the other two. James and Sirius. They actually found out last year." He huffed self-depreciatingly. "It's rather hard to hide that you get ill once a month from your roommates."

"I can see that." She jokingly asked, "So, Peter figured it out? I can't imagine the other two noticing much of anything other. They're not bad guys, don't get me wrong. But I've never thought they were particularly perceptive."

"No, actually, I think James figured it out. Last year. That's why we started hanging out… apparently, it was much less alarming to know you are rooming with a werewolf than someone who happens to be shy."

"Oh, definitely. That makes a lot of sense. Or maybe they thought you were a spy for McGonagall and you faked ill every month to give her the dirt on their activities." It didn't sound that much worse than some of their theories, to be perfectly honest.

Honestly amused, Remus shook his head and wryly intoned, "Crap, you're onto me." They started walking again, tracing the edge of the black lake. "They've actually been really good about it." He scratched at his head self-consciously. "They've got this ridiculous theory about becoming Animagi so that they could spend the full moon with me. But that's really advanced spellwork."

"I think it's an excellent idea," she said firmly. "In fact, I want in on it."

"…excuse me?"

"You're excused." She smirked, knowing well that wasn't what he'd meant. "Would you have me there, if I could do the transformation? I'd like to be there for you."

His eyes were wide and a little misty. She generously pretended not to notice when he swiped at them and cleared his throat. "I don't think it's very realistic. I told the others that as well- a lot of adults never manage the transformation, and there's no guarantee they can do it."

"That didn't sound like a no". She grinned, and bounced up and down on her heels. "I bet I can do it faster than any of the boys." It would even be a relatively fair contest- she had never gone through the process in her past life. "I bet I have a cooler form too. The boys are all probably squids. Or dumb dogs," she added. It was always good to have reason to tease Sirius.

"I hope not, I don't think that werewolves and squid get along very well. A dog might be fine, however."

"Let's aim for better than 'fine'."

Now that she 'knew' about his lycanthropy, Hermione wondered if she could help Lily and Severus 'discover' wolfsbane, or maybe inspire them to invent an actual cure. Her legilimency was good enough that she could plant the suggestion in Lily's head. It was an idea, but not one she would utilize immediately. For now, she decided to look into the political climate involving werewolves. She knew that Remus had struggled against discrimination for years and been unable to find employment, so the picture couldn't be great. She was determined to improve his situation by the time they graduated. After all, if any of them deserved a chance to pursue excellence, Remus did. He worked so much harder than she or even Lily did.

Perhaps the understanding of lycanthropy was better in other nations? She made a note to investigate that and see if there were any particularly successful rhetoric strategies to emulate.

* * *

Hermione sat with her feet tucked underneath her body on one of the luxurious chairs in the Room of Requirement. The only sounds she heard was the crackling fireplace, Regulus's quill scratching on parchment as he took notes on whatever book he was reading, and the noises of her own breathing.

Things had been going surprisingly well- she was closer to the Marauders than she had ever been. They had even showed her and Lily their completed map. She rather wished that they hadn't, as Lily had innocently pointed out that the Room of Requirement wasn't on it. She sighed heavily. She had rather enjoyed having this place as just her secret. Though the boys had hounded her, she hadn't given them the details on how to access the room. It was, unfortunately, only a matter of time until they figured it out. They were persistent little monsters.

Not that she was any less persistent- Hermione had her own share of projects to be working on. She had started a completely new one in the Chamber of Secrets- an attempt to replace the basilisk that she had killed. It had turned out that certain eggs worked better than others to hatch a basilisk. Nothing had happened yet on the front.

Harry's body, on the other hand, was a mixed success. It was indeed resembling a human child at this point- it had the correct amounts of tiny toes, fingers, and even strangely perfectly shaped ears.

It had not, however, really been Harry. Hermione had put her face to her face and cursed herself up and down for being so utterly stupid as to completely forget basic principles of genetics. Using Lily and James' DNA had ensured that the golem would be a mix of their genetics, but it didn't ensure a damn thing in regards to this golem getting the same mixtures of trait as Harry had.

She had been utterly thick-headed for not even considering the possibility that the golem wouldn't miraculously end up a tiny baby Harry. It was just as likely to be female to Harry's male and tall to Harry's short. It was slightly more likely to have his dark hair than Lily's red- but much more likely to have brown eyes like James than the green Harry and Lily possessed. Dominant and recessive alleles hadn't even figured into her calculations. Hermione felt completely inept for forgetting her Muggle roots so thoroughly and making witchy mistakes of magical thinking. _The universe is not always conspiring to help you, _she reminded herself in exasperation.

When they had seen it, Harry had taken it in much better stride than she had. _At least it's male_, he'd said pragmatically. _I don't much fancy being a girl._ It was a little soon to tell for sure, but Hermione thought that the blue eyes were becoming brown and that the tiny features resembled Lily's bone structure much more so than James's.

Hermione shook her head briskly, trying to dislodge unimportant thoughts when she needed to focus on something else. She had come here with the intention of doing research on the current state of wizard/werewolf interaction and legislation. The subject was more than a little depressing. The laws were archaic, and more than a few members of the Wizengamot and officials in the Ministry had stated harsh, anti-lycanthropy positions in recent years.

One particular article about legalizing hunting had boiled her blood, and she had put aside the research on that particularly odious gentleman for the time being. The rest were-though undoubtedly bigoted- less violently crazy, instead wanting restrictions on werewolf income, employment, education, marriage rights, and where they could live. Their logic was based on the fact that the uneducated werewolves living in poverty in Britain were often criminals, and thusly did not deserve equal treatment.

_Utterly brilliant- if you force part of your population to be undereducated, poor, and take away their right to pursue normal happiness, what the hell do you expect?_ She rubbed her head, wishing the world wasn't so stupid. When people have nowhere to turn, of course they turn to the fringes of society. It really isn't so complicated to figure out.

The people pushing these agendas had to be stopped, somehow. Hermione wasn't immature enough to believe that they were all evil. Undoubtedly, many of them were misinformed, frightened, and irrational at worst. They had likely been told lies by frightened parents and teachers who didn't know any better either. None of those things were exactly crimes to be hung for. They deserved mercy as much as the werewolves they forced into criminal livelihoods did.

But giving mercy and consideration to an oppressed class wasn't the same thing as being merciful to the oppressors- these people were actively impeding the chances of other human beings to have decent lives. In an ideal world, logical arguments would win them over, and seeing the error of their ways, they would work to help repeal their discriminatory legislation.

But the world didn't work like that. The world would be a much more just place without people like that in it.

Hermione sighed, running her finger over the articles she hadn't managed to get through yet. Perhaps this was the topic for the night. Regulus hadn't started one yet, so she may as well. "Is it more important to be just, or to be merciful?"

"Just. The very concept of mercy is giving aid to someone who doesn't deserve it. Giving justice is righting wrongs and fixing errors. It is certainly… noble, to offer aid when it isn't required, but it is a luxury, as opposed to an imperative." He paused to consider his words, taking up his mug of tea and gently swirling it. Eventually, he continued, "A society that does not pursue justice is worthless and will fall apart, as its members cannot be counted upon to honor the bonds that connect them. A society that does not pursue mercy is merely unkind."

In the silence that followed, Hermione tried to compose a rebuttal. That was how their conversations worked, after all- the second person to take a side played Devil's Advocated.

"Do you know," she said quietly, "I can't bring myself to disagree with you. I want to disagree, very much so. I would like to say that it is a moral imperative to help whenever you can. But a moral imperative… that's a pretty thing, something we can do, not that we have to. I suppose it's one of those 'choice between what is right and what is easy' things. It's easy to say that everyone deserves consideration and kindness, but that's a cop out. You can't give that to everyone, because many people's happiness is dependent on the pain of others."

Regulus hmmed. "Sometimes I forget who is converting whom," he stated dryly, looking over at her for the first time. "Aren't you meant to be convincing me of the immutability of sunshine and rainbows and that your Muggle origins should mean nothing?"

Hermione laughed quietly. "I don't think we're talking about the same things. Besides, it isn't my place to try to adjust your worldview when I can't begin to understand it. If our visions are incompatible, we'll just have to live with the fact that we can't both have what we want and need. It's possible that neither of us will get what we deserve." She looked back at him. "But we'd be fools not to try, wouldn't we?"


	19. Descent, Part One

_Chapter 19_

_This chapter marks a turning point, and not all of it is entirely pleasant. If you absolutely despise what happens; hold on until you get to the very bottom. I won't say more than that here- but I think the note down there will answer any lingering questions/ redress lingering feelings of being wronged. Oh! And I believe this is the first chapter since ...chapter one, really, where a perspective other than Hermione's takes the stage. Tell me if you enjoy that, yes?_

Descent

Hermione tottered around the Chamber of Secrets, pensieve on a cleaned table found in a back room. It appeared that there had been a study and small library down here at some point, but un-renewed preservation charms had likely failed long before Tom Riddle came down fifty years ago. _More like thirty years ago_, Hermione corrected internally. _Keep your dates straight. _

She wasn't sure if she should be relieved Voldemort had missed out on the possible resource or be depressed that she didn't get to read them either. She had become very fond of the somewhat darker reading material she had of late, and Salazar Slytherin's words might have been very interesting.

Other than the damaged books (a phrase that had actually made her cry in past), everything was going suspiciously well, in the chamber, at least. She had finished the last of her secret reading list. The very last text had actually gone in some depth about horcruxes, but she scoffed at it. It had claimed that a foreign sliver of soul couldn't be entrusted to a living being that possessed a soul, as only one could exist in a body.

Considering that she had Harry living in her head, it seemed pretty evident that it was possible to have two souls in one body, unless she was missing some critical information. It wasn't possible for a soul to be separated from a mind, after all. If so, people kissed by dementors would possess their old knowledge. She bit her lip anxiously. Well, if that was true she probably wouldn't know- if the soul is what animates the body, as the Greeks believed, then that stored information would simply be inaccessible after a dementor kiss, not gone.

The thought that Harry's soul wasn't actually in her body, or that Harry's was and Hermione's wasn't was enough to make her feel rather ill. If that were true, then this would all be for nothing and she would be unable to animate Harry's new body.

She forced the thought away. At absolute worst, she would re-assimilate Harry and just grow used to sharing headspace. The thought that she might fail was too horrible to contemplate… so she just didn't contemplate it.

Her final read had also made the claim that splitting the soul more than once was a poor idea, as it was likely to leave the foolish wizard who attempted to get greedy with horcruxes incapable of experiencing human emotion and living normally. Iris somewhat dryly noted that Voldemort had probably laughed his scaly ass off at finding the big, scary deterrent other books had only hinted at.

She gave more weight to this claim- if Tom wasn't born a psychopath and completely incapable of relating to other human beings, then something drastic had to have happened. It sucked, but he was probably vastly more mentally stable right now than he had been when she had known him. _Well, before I destroyed the ring_, she noted with a smirk. _That might have affected his state of mind considerably._

Only two nights ago, Iris had thrown a literal birthday party with only one other guest- the guest of honor. One tiny basilisk had actually hatched. Hermione had made the discovery that basilisks didn't appear to have gender in the conventional sense- which, considering they didn't reproduce like other snakes, was obvious in retrospect. She also had her eyes sealed shut, and they were slowly opening.

It may have been childish and horrifically punny, but Iris had gone through a book of traditional but foreign wizarding names and found 'Hitomi', a name traditionally given to girls with especially beautiful eyes- with the literal meaning "pupil"…a body part that is controlled by the Iris. It had cracked her up so much that she couldn't bear to give the snake another name. Voldemort would probably be proud of how terribly convoluted and bad the name was- he clearly had no taste, either.

The hatching was sooner than she'd expected- luckily, it was a few days after she had gotten her ordered Muggle texts on snake biology. Apparently, snakes generally possessed a thin layer of transparent scale called brille over their eyes, which was shed with the rest of the skin.

Her hypothesis was that basilisks had evolved without this barrier- it had been proven in her time that diluting the basilisk's gaze with anything from a ghost to a mirror or puddle of water robbed it of its killing properties (and she idly wondered if a brille was the difference between a medusa's stone eyes and a basilisk's killing glance).

Granted, she had never actually examined the eyes of a basilisk in detail before. Harry hadn't seen them, and Hermione had only seen a yellow tinted flash in a mirror that was useless even under a pensieve's examination. However, Harry had been present when Fawkes dug out the eyes of Salazar's basilisk.

As the eyes were the primary weapons of a basilisk, the snakes would have evolved to protect them as best as possible, if there were any way to maintain their potency while doing so. She had cross-referenced data on how sturdy basilisk scale was meant to be, and determined that if there had been similar scale over the eyes, Fawkes would have been unable to gouge them out. Since examination of the Chambers revealed that there were no scaly-eyed shed skins, Hermione thought that her hypothesis had a certain amount of weight to it.

In true, belligerent Gryffindor fashion, the solution had been aggressively simple. Obviously, she needed to get the snake some non-prescription contact lenses.

Strangely enough, no one seemed to make contacts in the size and contours of snakes' eyes. However, in the seventies, there were an awful lot of those 'hard' contact lenses, as comfortable ones hadn't been invented yet, and she was more than competent with engorgement charms and transfiguration. Just for kicks, she got a variety of colored ones and planned to stick them on snakey faces. Hitomi was getting eerie blue contacts with large, fake pupils. It was adorable and unnatural looking.

Her new scaly friend was a little displeased with the arrangement, but acquiesced when shown the skeleton of the previous basilisk and kindly reminded that her purpose was to serve as a final line of defense for the school, and to keep those goddamn acromantulas in check.

(in light of her determination that her serpents would serve Hogwarts, Hermione had already pick out 'Yori', servant to the public, and 'Mamoru', protector, as the names for her next snakes to hatch. Names were awfully important to magical creatures. She had also decided not to name any serpent amusing things like "Dr. Evil", although she gave serious consideration to naming one 'You know who".)

In the grand scale of things, Hermione much preferred one or two reasonably good mannered, poisonous, statue-making serpents to a herd of great dirty spiders. She had run into a couple of the monsters while poking her head into the forest from the second exit tunnel she found. There didn't appear to be anywhere near as many as what Harry remembered, but that didn't mean they should be left to roam free.

_I'm thinking in tangents again_. This week had been tough. Lily had seemed to realize that Iris was still spending a lot of her free time with Regulus. It was mildly ironic that Lily, who had fiercely fought to maintain a friendship with a slytherin Severus in what she still thought of as the 'real' timeline, was policing the Gryffindor party line about mixing with green-clad students.

Granted, Lily was intelligent enough to know that most of the peer-enforced separation was just plain stupid, and that Regulus himself must be a decent type if Iris was seeking him out. However, she was more than a little bit worried about how his housemates would react if they caught on that they were spending time together, much less how his family would react.

It seemed that Lily had been listening to Sirius's offhand comments about his family and come to the (correct) conclusion that they were dangerously crazy individuals who would kill a muggleborn as soon as look at her. Funny, that.

Iris appreciated her sister's concern in an abstract way, but in practice it was just annoying. Although she did have a bit of a point- if she and Regulus disappeared at the same time, month after month, someone was eventually going to figure out where they were going/ that they were going there together.

Lily had come to the rather logical conclusion that there was no way for Iris to change the way that certain purebloods viewed her, and that thusly this eventual discovery would be painful at best. If Iris had only known what her sister had, she might have come to the same conclusion and allowed her quiet association with the 'proper' Black heir to die. However, Iris had more information and perspective.

If she really wanted pureblood approval… all she had to do was hiss a little in the right ears.

That would shut them the hell up right quick-granted, they would probably assume that she and Lily were hidden descendants of a bastard branch of the Slytherin line. Lily wouldn't be able to play into the ruse, but Iris had enough sneakiness for the both of them.

Tom Riddle had taken the wizarding world by storm with a combination of charm, wit, good looks, and rare magical talents that hinted at pedigree superior to any Malfoy's. Hermione wasn't naturally anywhere near as charming or adept at manipulation, but she was certainly good enough to pass scrutiny from people judging her as a thirteen year old. Her wit and talent were certainly above reproach. She had also won the genetic lottery when she was reborn with Evans genetics- in this life, she had the looks to pass as the scion of an old house.

Considering how ignorant and discriminatory the wizarding world was, physical beauty was a surprisingly strong argument of good pedigree. (The fact that there was absolutely no factual basis for the vain assumption that they were more attractive than their non-magical counterparts was probably a holdover from before advent of modern plumbing, but lack of evidence had never stopped wizards from believing something that benefitted them).

All in all, Iris was reasonably prepared to become more than a bit player on her own.

It may well be useful to establish an identity as something more than a mudblood pawn under Dumbledore's protection. She couldn't be caught encouraging those sorts of impressions, not by any light-oriented folk, but it was possible that she could manipulate the relatively insular, close-mouthed darker groups into suspecting that she was one of them in the ways that counted. The suspicion that she was both dangerous and more important than appearances would suggest would influence them to tread lightly around her, which would give her a lot more freedom. Wary people didn't commit to a course of action they couldn't go back on.

Perhaps the most dangerous implication of this idea was that Voldemort was almost certain to be informed of a young parselmouth and want to investigate himself. She didn't much fancy the idea of dealing with him, although she now had a quite impressive curse repertoire and retained Occlumency skills that were thorough enough that she might be able to lie to him. _Still, not a fan of that possibility. Voldemort is creepy as hell. _

But it was an important possibility that she might not be able to pass up. It would be relatively easy to plant the information with Regulus's (knowing or not) assistance.

Hermione carefully dripped permanent aging and accelerating solution into the mouth of the little Harry doll (who did indeed have brown eyes and a hair color and texture caught between James's dark curls and Lily's silky bright tresses, as per her earlier observation). She carefully finger combed through his soft hair, gently smiling when he blinked at her without any comprehension or emotion.

The recipe for the simulacrum she'd made had made it clear that the author expected the end product to be used as cheap labor or (she shuddered) potions ingredients, as it was technically just as human as she was. It was perfectly content to lie quietly on the narrow but high-raised bed she had conjured for it and wait for instructions. The reminder that another wizard might have cut up this docile but sweet child for parts was a chilling reminder that she was dabbling in black arts. She scoffed at the cruelty of the author, who suggested keeping the creation under tight control and physical restraints at all times.

She had been giving it small doses of potions to keep it healthy and accelerate the aging process daily over the past month. By this point, Harry's body looked to be about twelve in age- clearly in a stage of development that could easily be passed off as a year or two older. Besides, there was no real reason that Harry couldn't take aging aids on his own when she had him in his body.

(Hermione was rather weary of encouraging the barely sentient construction of flesh and magic to consume nutrient potions. Convincing it to move so that muscles didn't atrophy was even more time consuming and frustrating).

It was sometime in the late evening- definitely past nine pm- when Hermione settled on a fluffy chair in the spotless and re-decorated Chamber and began to extract every memory of Harry's and deposit it into the pensieve. After what seemed like hours but was only twenty-two minutes, Hermione stopped, panting and in cold sweat. She drew her knees up onto the chair and used the power of sheer will to brow-beat her dizziness into submission.

"**Apparently, the human mind finds it somewhat traumatizing to suddenly lose a large portion of memories**," she informed the small snake watching disinterestedly from her warmed rocks in the now-clean running water (filled with bright, tiny fish) surrounding the room.

She still had the impression of all the knowledge Harry had possessed- she just had no conscious recollection of the experiences that led to the accumulation of said information. "Only…" she groaned. "There's only another couple years of memories to go. Merlin, that is an unpleasant feeling."

She waited for the Harry voice in her head to comment on that, perhaps encourage her to take a break. _That sounds like something he'd say,_ she noted dazedly. But there was no commentary. Hermione frowned, wondering if this was a good thing or not. She leaned back and relaxed for a few minutes, before closing her eyes and slipping into her mindscape.

Hermione didn't really have a visual mindscape in the way that her textbooks had described as a common setup. Instead, she experienced the art of examining her own mind as an auditory experience, guided by things she instinctively knew and recognized. While Harry had just began to experience his memories as stored information on pages of essay when he became passable at occlumency, Iris had retained Hermione's mind organization style.

_Harryyyyyy?_

_Are you there?_

She called a few times, but knew that he wasn't present, which was a little unnerving. There were still the remaining factual recollections of his experiences intermingled with Hermione's old memories and the mutually experienced ones from recent years… but the weight of his presence seemed absent- she wondered at that, as his most recent memories were still in her head. _Does this mean he is conscious in the Pensieve? If so, is he there as a fifteen year old, where the memories cut off?_

Perhaps his consciousness was never really here in a concrete way, she suddenly worried. _It could be that I experienced his personality and thoughts as a manifestation of all his memories, and that my mind simply can't fill in the blanks with such an incomplete collection of thought… Or that the soul and the intellect are separate, and his mind is unable to function when separated from an animating soul._

That sort of theorizing wasn't going to help anything. If he hadn't been real in that sense, there was nothing she could so. "That was just a panic-induced, last minute worry," she scolded herself. There's no real conclusive evidence for that theory. Well. Other than the theories of Ancient Greek philosophers… and then Rene Descartes's work on the metaphysical split between mind and body, more recently. _Doubts are for other people, I'm a Gryffindor. I boldly go where angels fear to tread and all that rot._

It was rather anticlimactic after that thought, but she transfigured her chair into a fainting couch and closed her eyes for a rejuvenating rest- she needed to be reasonably alert to pull this off. After an hour, she was in a state to extract the remaining memories and deposited them with a keen sense of satisfaction. Hermione took another half an hour to rest, meditating instead of napping this time. The Harry doll observed her in peaceful silence.

"I want you lay still," she informed the simulacrum. "I'm going to be helping you transfer memories, since you don't have a wand. _What if this wand doesn't work for me after this since it was meant to be Harry's_? She wondered. _No matter, I can always go get my real wand_. Strangely, she didn't like that idea. This wand really felt like it belonged to her, in the way that her legs or kidneys did.

Hermione gently swirled the tip of her phoenix wand in the pensieve, extracting a memory of Quidditch to start with. She tapped it gently to the simulacrum's temple, watching at its eyes widened and it suddenly inhaled deeply. "Do you know what I just did?" She murmured. "Do you remember flying?"

"Yes," it whispered, speaking for the first time. "It felt so light and warm."

Hermione gave the creature a bizarre look for that comment, but let it go. It probably didn't have the vocabulary or cultural knowledge to communicate normally yet. After all, she was the only person who talked to it and she was hardly around enough for it to pick up that much English.

She found that the golem seemed rather uncomfortable when it absorbed memories of the Dursleys or their earlier adventures, so she worked to alternate the good and the bad memories with bland ones. It was shaking and emitting a low keening sound when she forced it to remember Voldemort's resurrection night. "Just a little more, Harry" she soothed. "Just a few more years of memories. Then you'll be back to normal, and everything will be okay."

Eager to push forward but unwilling to damage Harry by rushing, she took a break and worked on improving the lighting in the Chamber by classing it up with a crystal chandelier. For comfort, she created a lovely soft rug in a rich, majestic purple that lined the huge chamber. _If nothing else, I have a wonderful career in home decoration ahead of me_, she mused while she waited. _I really need to look up that spell that creates impossible windows- serpents love sunshine. And we could have some plants down here, if I managed windows._

The work began again when she was absolutely sick with impatience, being as gentle as possible with the quivering simulacrum. He was gasping when she gave him the memories of the Tri-wizard tournament, opening sobbing when he got the news that the Weasley family had been caught by an explosive, and finally snapped when she eased what appeared to a relative innocuous memory of a broken hand held mirror at the bottom of a trunk.

"No, no, no!" Frothing at the mouth, the golem clawed at its face and convulsed on the bed. Alarmed, Hermione attempted to stupefy it to prevent self-harm. Despite being stilled, his brown eyes rolled wildly and she could see muscle spasms on frozen limbs.

Chilled, Hermione leant back- and luckily missed being hit by flying arms when the golem broke through her charm with a roar and flung itself on the ground to crawl to the edge of the room, pounding its head into the stone to the rhythm of guttural cries. Blood dripped from his mouth and skull, but he only grew wilder. "Harry, stop!," she cried. She didn't expect it to actually cease and turn to look at her with hatred in his dead, still eyes. It charged, screaming incoherently.

She dodged the first blow, but it took her down in a tackle the second time. It released devastating punches to her gut, raining down utter fury and crazed rage. Hermione knew that she had fucked up beyond all recognition- what she had made was now an abomination. Harry couldn't live in this dangerous, crazed flesh. Unable to so much as wheeze a defensive spell, she used both her hands to strike the golem's face. It was unfazed- she felt a rib outright break.

The hands that had scrabbled at her torso worked their way up to her face, digging fingers into her cheeks painfully and slamming her skull onto the thickly carpeted floor. That was apparently unsatisfying. Despite her struggled and clawing fingers, the simulacrum wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed, leaning in so closely that his face was almost touching hers. The sweet face that had reminded her so much of Lily was contorted in a feral grin, huffing hot air into her face and emitting low growls. He was watching her die. She was dying! She had no skills with wordless magic, and no matter how she hit or contorted, he was on top of her with an iron grip. She couldn't dislodge him! Pinpricks of gray appeared in her vision- she hadn't been breathing well even before he started choking her, what with the broken rib.

In an utter panic, her ambient magic rose up to protect her. It forced the golem all the way across the room, where he collided with the wall and slid down. It didn't stay on the ground a full second before charging at her again. Little Hitomi shot at his heels, striking repeatedly, biting him almost too quickly for Hermione to see. She did see, however, that Hitomi's venom must not yet be powerful enough to take down a human child.

"Bombarda," she wheezed in absolute desperation, knowing full well that she wouldn't be able to shoot off another spell in her state. Then she watched as the accumulation of more than a year's worth of research and endless hours of intellectual and physical labor fell to his knees, then to the ground twitching, writhing and smoothing down her new carpet with the blood from the hole in his chest. The screaming died out into desperate gasps for air filled with liquid. And then there was silence, except for the approaching whisper of tiny scales.

_Maybe this is why dark wizards used these for potions_, she noted. _Not stable, not stable at all. _Dazed, in immeasurable pain, and knowing that she was on the verge of passing out from the combination of exhaustion and screaming pain receptors, Iris slowly turned her head to look at the nearly empty Pensieve. It had turned black, the metal of the cup bubbling into a warty surface and the misty liquid inside dried up into something crusty.

_I fucked up, big time. That book- I should have considered what it said._ Through a haze came the information she had known but ignored because it was unpleasant. _No soul. Harry's soul isn't here_. That spell brought back three souls and four sets of memories. That's why we shared a body- he couldn't exist alone. _I'm so stupid, so fucking stupid. I just didn't hear anything I didn't want to… and so I gave a soulless being life and thought. Like Frankenstein's monster. Like what Voldemort is now. _She breathed in to cry, consumed by her own failure- and faded from consciousness.

When Iris came to, her world was pain and emptiness. She barely felt the small form of her serpentine companion coiled soothingly around her arm, too distracted by the physical discomfort of her situation. She tried to think about what she needed to do right now- it was possible she had a concussion from having her head slammed into the stone floor (luckily cushioned by the carpet, so maybe not). The disorientation from excessive pensieve use had faded, so her cognitive functions were likely unimpaired, assuming the concussion was a no.

The light pressure of the tips of her fingers were enough to confirm that her torso was a hideous mass of bruises, covering fractured and at least one broken rib. If there had been internal bleeding, she might have died in her sleep, so that probably wasn't an issue.

_Thank god I hadn't waited until the golem was biologically older_, she realized. _If he'd been much stronger, he would have succeeded in killing me. _

She quietly assessed her own knowledge of medical spells and techniques- it wasn't good, to say the least. But… she did know where she could find the spells, and a powerful, but dark, hex that would cut off nerve endings and allow her to work despite what would other wise be debilitating pain. That spell would significantly raise the danger that she would unintentionally cause more harm to herself, but it couldn't be helped.

"Tempus".

Three am- the halls would be deserted, hopefully. She considered turning back time so that she could walk around before the end of curfew, and was alarmed to realize her mind wasn't functioning as well as thought. She could only travel back a maximum of six hours- if she left the chamber at nine pm, she would be unable to get everything she needed before the library closed.

It was lucky that the spell she needed to use was a simple one with a two-syllable vocalization, because speech was incredibly difficult. As heat washed over her flesh, the pain fled. She firmly reminded herself not to speak or move more than absolutely necessary- the inhibiting pain was gone, but it wasn't any less dangerous to exacerbate her injuries.

Gingerly, she conjured a small mirror to check the visible damage. Most of her serious bruises would be covered by her shirt, but as for the damage to her face and neck… For the first time in either of her existences, she wished that she had paid attention to the spells her more feminine roommates took for granted. A glamour right now would be wonderful. However, it wasn't going to happen.

It must have taken twenty minutes to trudge up the spiraling flight of stairs to the girls' bathroom. She thanked every deity in existence that the library was reasonably close- what was only normally a six-minute walk at a leisurely pace. It took her about twelve. She trudged mindlessly forward, still feeling a bone-deep ache and tiredness despite the lack of piercing pain.

_Someone must be looking down on me tonight._ She encountered no patrolling teachers or prefects, and the books she needed would be easy to access. If she'd had to go into the restricted section… well, in this state she would have been better off giving in and going to the infirmary. If she had an excuse to explain her injuries, she certainly would have preferred to have a professional treat her.

DAMNITFEELSGOODTOBEAGANGSTER

The third-year boys' dorm was a filthy hot mess, and Sirius loved it. Granted, Remus and Peter had long since fallen asleep, and James was scribbling the final touches onto the plans of their artistic masterpiece now, so it was pretty quiet. Sirius himself wasn't allowed to touch shared supplies except when necessary to save a life, after that whole inferno incident, so he bounced up and down on his bed, sucking on a hard candy he had discovered in Remus' pillowcase (Remus was currently snuggling up to a fuzzy bathrobe, having made motions to wake up when Sirius confiscated the pillow).

"Hey, look at that," James muttered as he caught motion on the corner of his eye. "Check the map, would you? Someone's up and moving around."

Sirius snatched up the Marauder's Map and held it up to the light. "Aren't even the teachers in bed by now?" He paused. "Holy shit- that's Iris!"

James snickered. "Really? Oh hell, what a naughty girl. You should go check on her."

"She's in the library…"

"Well, what do you expect from her? It's still rule-breaking." James snickered. "Maybe she studies alone at night, in secret so that no one knows she isn't actually perfect." He wiped the back of his hand on his cheek, leaving a streak of black ink. Sirius chose not to tell him.

"Are you going to come? I don't have a cloak of invisibility, you know." He carefully hid Remus' pillow in the closet, planning to use it for his dark porpoises later.

James reached down and rummaged around in a desk drawer. "Here." Silvery fabric hit Sirius in the face and slid down his body before he caught it. He grimaced. "Ugh, this still reeks, mate. Did you put this by your dirty socks?"

James gave him a dirty look. "So clean it, you big baby."

Striding along confidently under the invisibility cloak with the map clutched in his hand, Sirius pushed open the library door with the intention of surprising his classmate. It squeaked… and he winced. So much for that. He heard nothing, and saw nothing when he poked his head inside. She didn't have a cloak, did she? He glanced the map, and approached her location. He threw the hood off with a flourish. "It's just me, my fair lady." He bowed to her approximate location. "Jamesie boy and I saw you were out sneaking on the map." He wiggled a finger at her. "Naughty, naughty! What are you doing, waging covert warfare against essays we don't even have assigned yet?"

There was a long silence, of the type that Iris often fell into when she just… stared, eerily before deigning to speak. He was shocked at her voice- it was a breathy whisper. "If you promise not to tell anyone anything, I'll tell you. This is really important, I'm in a big hurry."

Sirius swallowed. "Yeah, of course," he waved as though the request for absolute silence hadn't freaked him out just a bit. "What's up?"

She stepped forward, skin rippling under what he realized was a strong disillusionment charm. _That's why I couldn't see her,_ he realized. _Impressive charms work_. And then it fell, and his eyes widened. "Holy shit, what happened to you?" he gasped, taking in her dilated pupils, pale skin, and green-black bruises smattering pretty much all the skin he could see. She sheepishly waved the book she'd been holding at him- he caught the title "First Aid"

"I may have overestimated my knowledge about something I was experimenting with," she said in that same breathy voice. She looked as though she was about to fall over, and Sirius suddenly knew she was hurt far worse than some ugly bruising. He also knew that she was having a hard time speaking and probably breathing.

"Is anything broken?", he finally managed.

"Yeah, I think so. A rib is almost certainly busted. And I'm not entirely certain if I have a concussion from hitting the floor when my project.. well.. exploded." She looked embarrassed and sad. "Before, I would have said I'm cognitively fine. But… I am having a terrible time remembering how to pronounce this Latin. And I got lost one or two times on the way here."

"You need the hospital!" he hissed. "You could die- don't you say a thing, you can barely breathe. There's reckless, and then there's just plain stupid. This? Is just plain stupid." He grabbed at her book and flipped through the index, finding a diagnostic spell in less than a moment. "Lay down on that table." He had to help her, but the instant she was settled he performed the charm, and swore at the results.

"What is-"

"I said, no speaking." He rifled through the book again, finding the spell that would pop her bone back in place, the one that would heal the rift, and the one that would massage surrounding tissue. She breathed easier in about two minutes, and he set looking for a spell to treat her fractured ribs- the same spell would work, but it was too high powered and he couldn't perform it that many times. Once her bones were in place, he flipped to the section on head trauma and read the basic information.

"Okay, you should be able to just push through that in time. Now about those bruises…" he leveled her with a look. "Seeing as how you were about to kill yourself to avoid proper medical attention, I can only assume that you did not intend to go to class looking as though someone beat you with the Whomping Willow." She meekly nodded, looking uncharacteristically pathetic and small. It was rather creepy, honestly. Iris was never this pliant. Even now that she could breathe, she looked like death warmed over, like she just wanted to curl up in a dark corner and stop being.

More gently now, Sirius cast spells he actually knew off the top of his head, wiping away the ugly mess on her face, and turning utterly white when he realized the bruising on her neck looked like finger marks. She'd said it was an experiment, hadn't she? She hadn't said what sort… and she could simply be lying to protect her pride. Aghast, Sirius gently wiped away the bruising on her arms with tenderness utterly at odds with the fury in his head. Someone had done this to her. Some fucking Slytherin bastard, who just wanted to pick on a muggleborn target?

He managed to keep his voice steady when he asked, "Is there any more?"

She turned red. "Yes, a bit. But I can get it on my own!" she hurriedly added, one hand self-consciously on her chest. "Thank you for helping, and showing me that charm you just did. I feel much better."

She didn't look much better, he noted darkly. Her face was still unnaturally pale, and she was shaking with… was it nerves, fear, or something else?

"If you're sure…" He recast the diagnostic charm, relieved to see that all that showed up still was the indication of bruising on her chest and stomach. What, had someone kicked her while she was on the ground? He felt sick, both in the physiological sense and with fury, but didn't let that show as he gently draped the cloak over her head and huddled up next to her. "Let's go to the tower, it's definitely past time to rest."

_Should have done your research with an open mind, Hermione. In all seriousness, I know that killing off Harry is bound to be controversial… but it had to happen in this story. To be honest, with the logic used here, he was dead before the first real chapter started. If anyone cares, I have an actual philosophical basis for this decision, which makes it into the story in bits and pieces._

_HOWEVER, though Harry is super-dead in this story, I have considered writing a splinter story, using the eighteen chapters proceeding this and re-telling the story from the point where Hermione's experiment in What Man Was Not Meant To Do actually worked, and she has all sorts of happy fun time adventures with Harry. Might not happen, and it wouldn't be until this story was done- but if there's enough interest and strong opinions, I will do it._

In other words, don't just yell at me for offing Harry, because it had to happen and I'm not sorry. Do, however, feel free to tell me if you are interested in reading that story as well, and any thoughts you might have about improvement.


	20. Descent, Part Two- End of Third Year

_This chapter is a bit shorter than the last ones, but there's only so much to fit in before summer starts, and school years just seem like logical transitions for me. This chapter is a point for Hermione to start re-evaluating what she has been doing, and try to determine how she wants to act in future. Arguably, she's leaning closer to Xena than Mother Teresa when it comes to dealing with obstacles._

_Chapter 20_

Descent, Part Two

"[F]orgiveness is in danger of being debased into a kind of cheap grace, a waiving of standards of justice without which such transactions have no meaning." - Wilfred McClay

Class was surprisingly difficult when you felt as though you were operating with half a brain. The material was still easy, of course- but Iris couldn't focus past the terrible emptiness, the split in the center of her being where another was meant to be.

She'd realized that Harry had never actually come to the past- the re-wiring of her brain had merely assimilated the separate sets of memories, and assumed that two sets of memories meant that there were two consciousnesses in her head. That was untrue. It was a portion of her own consciousness assuming the identity it read from Harry's memories….

In other words, she had possessed a legitimate mental illness, although not a split personality. (she'd researched the topic enough to know that there was no muggle equivalent, and that if she had split personality disorder she wouldn't have been able to contact the other personality normally. Instead, it would take charge of certain interactions. Even that sounded better than the half-life she was living).

Iris regretted everything. She regretted trying, she regretted fooling herself, and she certainly regretted making enormous assumptions about souls and the nature of existence and consciousness.

On some level, she regretted not taking the Voldemort-esque course of action of splitting her soul. Harry's consciousness could have lived in that body if she'd put a soul in it. Instead, she had created a monster.

Not that the soul-splitting thing wouldn't have created two monsters, but she wasn't exactly feeling that rational lately.

Her difficulties were compounded by the fact that both Sirius and Lily were keeping an unusually close eye on her, so her poor little basilisk minion was feeling neglected. She wasn't surprised about Sirius's attention- he was probably worried she was going to wander off and explode more things if he looked away for ten minutes. Finding her in the library the way he had must have been incredibly traumatizing for a real child. _Not that Sirius was exactly normal in regards to age-appropriate trauma_, she thought, recalling the spells he knew off-hand for healing bruises and cuts.

Lily, on the other hand, who hadn't seen her in such a state, was simply more observant of her moods than Iris had realized. It probably shouldn't have surprised her that Lily knew her well enough to tell that she was constantly distracted and unhappy.

"Miss Evans, are you paying attention?" McGonagall rapped her desk, and Iris's head shot up.

"Sorry, ma'am," she demurred. McGonagall frowned slightly, but moved on with the lesson.

After morning lessons, Iris reluctantly followed her peers to the great hall. She often skipped meals, but it was probably best not to raise more suspicions about her behavior, or allow herself to wallow in isolation. She picked at her food, finding that the meat and vegetables she selected seemed bland today. When Lily pushed a bowl of soup at her, she grimaced. "Everything tastes like parchment."

Fed up with trying to stomach real food, Iris snagged a cinnamon roll and swung her legs over the bench. "I'm going to go read. I don't have class for a while anyway." She caught Sirius giving her an inscrutable look as she turned her head. Her face flushed- he was probably concerned that she was caught up in something bad. She was a little ashamed for causing him unnecessary worry, but trying to play down the incident would only send up more warning flags.

Instead of reading, Iris closed her curtains and stared up at the top of her bed posts to think alone. She had messed up, in a big way, and it was unfixable. However, it wasn't a one-off occurrence. The mistakes she had made weren't the "I misread the directions" type of innocuous blunder. Rather, she had been making severe errors of judgment in her thinking processes.

_New rules, Hermione. How are we going to fix these unfortunate tendencies, so…_ she winced. _Correction: How am __**I**__ going to fix these unfortunate tendencies, so that__** I**__ don't get anyone else killed?_ It was strangely difficult to think of herself as one person. _Perhaps I should make one of my requirements to examine my conclusions from a foreign perspective- a 'What would Jesus do" sort of thing_. She quirked the left side of her lips into a sad half-smile. _More like 'what would Harry do' in this case, but still._

_Rule number one: Don't assume your conclusions are infallible. Re-examine them. If I had given any serious thought to my situation and applied information that I readily knew from generally accepted philosophy, I would have had suspicions that Harry's consciousness needed a soul to animate it. _

_Rule number two: I can't ignore unpleasant data anymore. If I avoid evidence that I don't like, like that author's warning about restraining the golem, I set myself up for failure. When I read that, I should have seriously thought about why they would recommend that as a course of action, and corroborated the information from a different source. I could have indirectly killed a lot of people, if that golem had seemed normal for a while longer before it snapped. Really… I got very lucky that no one else was injured._

Rule number three: No more messing around with things I don't understand and acting on impulse. If something is above my comprehension, I need to do more research, not blunder forwards because I am impatient.

She groaned and rolled over, hiding her face in her pillow. _In other words, I did essentially everything wrong_, she bemoaned. _Perhaps I need to plan out a project using these rules. _Hermione reached into her bag, rustling things around until she found the stack of cut-up newspapers articles. She flipped through them, looking for one about one of the particularly detestable anti-lycanthropic rights activists. Gene Buckham, age fifty six, senior seat on the Wizengamot… had proposed a bill suggesting that the best way to deal with the werewolf problem would be to give more money to the Ministry department in charge of eliminating dangerous magical creatures.

"Well, the world would be a better place without this guy in it", she mused. "Maybe that's my new project."

She settled into a comfortable position to brainstorm- she couldn't very well write her ideas on parchment.

* * *

Hermione stepped quickly down the hall, half- fearing that her classmates would realize she had slipped away and look for her. It was time to meet Regulus- actually, she was a couple minutes late. However, Lily had expressed concern and kept trying to involve her in conversations over the last two days- in other words, since the day she had fought with the golum. It was sweet, but Hermione just didn't need the scrutiny right now. _Or ever, really_, she dryly noted.

At the blank stretch of wall in front of the silly man trying to teach trolls to dance, she did her pacing- just barely failing to notice the student who had been following her ducking back around the corner when he saw her turn around. At the sound of grinding stone, Sirius poked his head back around the corner just in time to see her disappear inside. Although he rushed up and examined the spot, he just couldn't figure out how to get in. "I'm guessing this is the room Lily noted we didn't have on the map," he dryly stated, giving the wall a kick for good measure. "She said room, not passage… So she's gotta come out at some point." He gave serious consideration to plopping down on the floor.

Inside the room, Hermione greeted Regulus. He appeared to be doing some sort of transfiguration experimentation. She walked over to take a closer look.

"It was something my mother mentioned," he informed distractedly. "She said she used to do this as a way to practice fine control."

She observed in silence for a few moments as Regulus struggled to condense and change a gas into a solid metal. "She must be a talented witch," she noted quietly. "That looks rather difficult." It actually did.

"Oh yes, very much so." He let out an uncharacteristic huff of relief as he began to get a better result. "But her talent isn't nearly as remarkable as much as the way that she honed her skills. She'll never be much of a duelist, unlike my cousin Bellatrix- did I tell you Bellatrix is already apprenticing under someone for that? Anyway, my mother has an excellent grasp of delicate work. It's under appreciated." He finally succeeded in changing the swirling gas in his bowl into a little silver ring. He stopped and panted for a moment, before beginning the process all over again.

"I'd like to meet her," Iris commented somewhat wistfully. She'd never seen wand work from someone that skilled in fine details. Dumbledore and the other teachers were skilled, yes, but they were all magically powerful to the point where brute force substituted for finesse. "I can only assume she wouldn't be particularly fond of me, however."

Regulus snorted. "Are you joking?" he turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. "If we introduce you as Sirius's muggleborn classmate, she'd toss you out on your arse. If, however, I tell her about my friend at Hogwarts, top of her year, with a very rare magical talent that proves she has a much better pedigree than appearances suggest, she would probably give you a chance. She's always out for something that might give her a leg-up on my aunt, discovering new talent and having her in her debt would be quite her idea of a good time."

He paused. ""It might be easier if we happen to mention that you have sisters you don't resemble. We could let her come to the conclusion that you are adopted, possibly from a deceased wizarding relative. I could write her tonight, and tell her that I've discovered a classmate with parseltongue, clearly the progeny of a superior bloodline, who has been cruelly lied to all her years. She would at least want to meet you. Probably without Sirius around, in order to ensure none of Dumbledore's flunkies find out you aren't what you seem. It sounds like something out of Narcissa's horrible novels."

"I don't know that I want to disclaim my sister…."

He slid the ring he'd been using onto his index finger and settled onto the couch. "Well, does she speak parseltongue too?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Actually… I don't know. I never asked, and she's never mentioned it."

He leveled her with a disbelieving stare. "Are you serious? What, it just never came up that you happen to have an incredibly rare magical talent, previously thought to only be achieved as a bloodline trait from an extinct family?"

"We're Gryffindors," she protested weakly. "It isn't the kind of thing that gets a whole lot of approval in the common room. And besides, when I first used it, I assumed it was one of those magical talents everyone had. Lily and I didn't go through and compare all of our accidental magic."

Though she didn't enjoy lying to her friends, those were two technically true statements remembered from childhood, just not from the same childhood.

Still… it had been stupid of her not to check. She'd exchanged genetic material with Lily, so the same might have happened in reverse. It was something to look into, although she didn't expect to find Lily exchanging recipe cards with anacondas anytime soon.

Regulus sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "You can be absolutely ridiculous, I hope you are aware," he informed tiredly. "If you want to be accepted in polite company, you're going to have to know as much as possible."

"What, you're not polite company?", she deflected. His expression indicated that he was less than amused at the avoidance.

"Certainly not. Polite company would have hexed you for daring to interfere with my business. Count yourself lucky I'm nearly as much of a disgrace as Sirius. If he weren't so openly rebellious, I wouldn't have to be the good son all the time," he snapped.

Hermione was unsure if it was her place to reply to that. Tentatively, she asked, "Do you resent him for that, then? I know I might have, were I in your place." She shrugged. "I like him a lot, he's a decent bloke and he's had my back in past. But… I don't know. I never thought you two seemed particularly close."

Anger and sadness flashed over his face before he wiped it blank. Brusquely, he commented, "I do not want to discuss the inner workings of my familial relationships at this time. Sirius will eventually grow up and realize that he cannot abandon his family."

She nodded her head, but privately remembered that Sirius never did that in the original timeline. If anything, he drifted further away from his family. He'd even died without knowing that Regulus had defected when he realized the monstrous things Voldemort had done in pursuit of immortality.

If anything, Regulus was more heroic than his Gryffindor brother. She heard echoes of what Dumbledore had said when Neville attempted to stop the trio from going after the Philosopher's stone- something to the tune of 'it's much harder to do the right things when your friends are the ones you need to stand up to". Rejecting a misguided philosophy entirely was brave, but still nowhere near the same thing as whole-heartedly believing it all your life, and having the strength of personal convictions to stand up when your heroes go beyond the pale.

However, there was no way to express her admiration for Regulus without sounding like a crazy person. So she resolved to try to talk to Sirius about his baby brother and see if they could reconcile.

"Stop that immediately, whatever you're thinking. You just put on the Gryffindor trademarked 'Im going to go right all the world's wrongs and rescue puppies from carnivorous trees' facial expression. For your own good, work on avoiding those urges or disguising them. My mother will eat you alive at tea time if she sees that."

"Right," she said somewhat sheepishly. "I will keep an eye on that."

* * *

Hermione stoppered up her inkbottle and held her newest letter to Petunia up to better admire it in the morning light. It had been a very, very late night for the girls in the third year dorm. Actually, none of them had gone to sleep yet, and were planning to get through the day on coffee and optimism instead. After all, they had a very important list of roommate bonding activities to get through, starting with a bottle of wine and an entire cake, and a stack of crafts.

Around her at the breakfast table, post owls were arriving. She artfully didn't allow herself to look up until one of her classmates exclaimed in disgust at one of the headline articles. "Oh, gross! Did you see this man actually tried to make a four-use portkey and ended up splinching himself all over the countryside?" _And the world is a better place for it,_ Hermione noted.

Lily grabbed for the paper. "Why on earth would anyone try that? I assume it was meant to take him one place, then the others, and not all of them at once, but that idea still sounds dangerous. The theory is rather impressive, but I can't imagine it would ever be simpler than just making four separate portkeys in the first place."

Joan and Alice made faces over their steaming tea. She had to lift her face off the tables, but Lauren commented, "It's a terrible idea to go experimenting with things like that. There's a reason experimentation is so tightly regulated, and it's mainly done under Ministry supervision."

"Yeah, but look!" Alice noted, "The man was even a Wizengamot member, he knew the law perfectly well. Even intelligent people can be so stupid sometimes."

The conversation degraded until it was about classwork, at which point Hermione thought it safe to excuse herself. "I left something back in the dorms, I'll meet you in class," she called behind her shoulder.

She couldn't help but smile and lightly roll the enchanted marble hidden in her pocket. _Portkeys are dangerous, indeed. Grown men should know better_. Instead of heading to the dorm, she slinked to the passage that would take her to a cellar in Hogsmeade, using her time turner to go back the full six hours it allowed. The article had stated that Mr. Gene Buckham, esteemed Wizengamot member and slimy bigot extraordinaire had been noted missing by his personal secretary (read: mistress) at six am when he failed to show up or floo, so she had quite a bit of time to find him, use his wand to finalize the charms, then imperious him into activating the portkey.

It couldn't be too hard- she had his house plans (they had been a matter of public record) and she already knew that she'd succeeded. If she got things done quickly enough, she could even get in a quick nap in the freshly corpse-free Chamber of Secrets.

(She didn't have terribly high standards, but she was relatively strict about the 'no corpses where she sleeps' thing).

* * *

Although it was tempting to keep it after she used it, Iris reluctantly left Buckham's cherry wood wand behind, reminding herself of how foolish it would have been to take trophies like a dark lord.

Instead, she dropped it to the floor where Buckham exited his study. It might seem a little strange that he was in there so early in the morning, so she had him change back into his day clothes from yesterday as if he had neve gone to bed. Then he arranged his bedroom as was his habit before she compelled him to engage in a few traceable spells. After about six, to leave a strong magical signal leaving evidence that he was conducting the type of experiments that could end in his death, she thought she'd done enough. Then she had him speak the word to activate the portkey.

She felt strangely as though she should do something else before she left. She'd just caused a man to die, and Hermione felt very little. He had been an evil, petty man actively trying to legalize the right for men like him to hunt and kill werewolves. If he was just a bigot, like Draco Malfoy had been in school, it would be worth trying to re-educate him. But Buckham was a grown man, cruel past the point of being shocked to his senses.

She really, truly didn't care. It would have been hypocritical to do so- especially considering her entire purpose in coming back in time was to kill Tom Riddle. One campaign of hatred isn't any worse than the next, really.

It was more intelligent to come back in a different entrance- and the Chamber of Secrets was a passage no one else kept track of. However, there was no time for her planned nap- she came back to find that another little snake had hatched.

Well… two had hatched, actually, but apparently one of them was disagreeable and Hitomi had eaten it. Though she was a little disgusted, Hermione felt it best not to involve herself too deeply in the affairs of snakes. It was rather the same theory behind going to a foreign culture and choosing not to tell them that they did things stupidly- if you don't tell the Germans not to dress in weird stockings, they won't come over and tell you how to decorate your flat. That sort of thing.

It took a while to explain what she expected and would provide for her new scaly minion, unnamed as of yet, which left her only about an hour of free time to kill before classes started. She spent it by going to the kitchens in search of more caffeine- she was seriously crashing at this point.

It had probably been unnecessary to keep her dorm mates up all night to ensure an alibi, but it couldn't hurt to establish a pattern of being occupied whenever things went wrong. When you were in possession of an incredibly rare magical artifact that gave you the ability to be in two places at once, it would just be incredibly sloppy not to bother having an alibi.

After the morning she had, classes seemed incredibly dull. She was barely conscious all day, and ended up receiving a detention from Flitwick of all people. Her weariness didn't seem that unusual, as all the third year Gryffindor girls were dozing on their desks. It was lucky that Wednesdays were shorter days- their classes extended hours longer on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She studiously ignored the fact that it wasn't luck when she was the one who chose the day- the principal of the thing still counted.

At this point, Hermione just wanted the school year to be over already. She didn't have huge summer plans, but she was quite ready to not have to sneak around peers and teachers like she did all through the school year. She would still have Lily and Petunia on her case during summers, but that was less intimidating than an entire house, and a castle full of stuffy prefects and professors.


	21. Discomfort

_Chapter 21_

_Discomfort _

"The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools". –Confucius

Hermione nervously adjusted the pins in her hair, waiting until it was the proper time to floo to the Black Estate to have dinner with Regulus' family. She could only assume Sirius wouldn't be there- Walburga had probably only agreed to meet her at Riddle's suggestion as a way of seeing if she really might be worth his time. Walburga Black had never been a Death Eater in her timeline, but she had been a sympathizer… and her niece was the Dark Lord's favorite. Regulus had only mentioned her to his mother, but Hermione had no doubts that news of a parselmouth had gone straight from Bellatrix's ears to her lips.

It was probably a good thing that Lily wasn't around the flat to see her fret- she had managed to find a position watching children for the summer in order to make pocket money. Iris hadn't told her sister she was going to the Black household- she hadn't told her anything at all, since Lily wasn't present to wonder.

Severus actually was in the apartment, though. He had set up base in the little home office room. This decision was influenced by two things-

1. The fact that he hated being at his house.

2. The fact that she had somehow convinced him it would be lovely to prank those irritating little shits in their year back for once. (Severus had a lot of repressed anger directed at the Marauders.)

Really, he was probably only reacting so strongly because James was harassing Lily, and Severus was very protective. Hermione had wondered, but it really seemed that Severus only had platonic feelings for Lily (so far, at least) and he was merely irritated on his friend's behalf instead of jealous.

Even if James hadn't been doing his suave best to impress the fair lady Lily, Severus had already found the Marauders' "farts and explosions" brand of humor to be distinctly dissatisfying.

Hermione was quite sick of it herself, to be honest. She was beginning to think that 'humor' was about as foreign a concept to wizards as 'common sense' was. Even 'strict' McGonagall seemed tickled whenever the degenerate asshats spelled the Halloween pumpkins to fart the national anthem, or hid fireworks in a toilet.

She had known that these boys were famous (or was it infamous?) for being funny pranksters. So far, they had the pranking bit down, and she was most unamused. _They must improve rapidly to have that kind of reputation_, she thought. _That or everyone just remembers them as being much funnier than they were, themselves included._

In her not-so-humble opinion, it was much funnier to corrupt the dour little Snape into inventing the Weasley Wizard Wheezes that she remembered fondly. He and Lily had finally managed to construct candies that caused various symptoms without killing the test rats. He quite cheerfully informed her that it was easier to make them tasty than it was to make them safe, and Hermione made a mental note not to eat any candy lying around.

However, he was now working without Lily's help most days while she shepherded little brats around parks and made them sandwiches, and so Sev had long since moved onto what she still thought of as Peruvian Darkness Powder. Snape was just calling it blackout powder. That worked too.

He was of two minds about the pranking- he thought most of it was childish, but was willing to stoop to that level to make James miserable. On the other hand, some of the products Iris had suggested (with words or by leading him to the idea) could be quite useful in the upcoming conflict that was now obvious to even third years. The term "death eaters" had finally entered common parlance, and anti-muggle sentiment was on every Daily Prophet opinion page. While Severus was a half-blood and therefore relatively safe; his best friends were obvious targets. He seemed to like the idea of having an arsenal that no one else would know how to counter

Five minutes until she was going to step through the floo to 12, Grimmauld Place. Hermione checked herself in the mirror one final time- her makeup and robes were both impeccable, and her unruly hair had been beaten into submission with styling gel and arranged in three buns at the nape of her neck, creating a slight bowl she had filled with a few blue roses and little white flowers that matched nicely with her robes.

The outfit itself reminded her of the clothes Bellatrix had favored as an adult- a corset over a dress with a hanging hooded cloak attached to her shoulders, and long gloves. Unlike Bellatrix's dour black leather and fine (but still black) silk, however, she had blue silk under gray lace coloring for the corset, with a darker grey dress, light grey cloak, and blue gloves. It was somewhat traditional witch's clothing, but certainly not what Hermione had ever become used to wearing.

_Might as well get used to looking like a rock-star princess all the time_, she thought. _I'm not going to fit in if I wear blue jeans and sweaters._

Of course, she wouldn't dress exactly like this regularly. Casual robes had a shorter dress and didn't have to have the corset overlay. Although the rules of witch's dress seemed arbitrary and stupid, she had memorized them after she had gotten her invitation to dinner.

The clock moved and so did she. The green powder hit the flames and scattered, jewel-bright wisps in the air. "Black Manor," she said firmly, though in her head it was 'number twelve Grimmauld Place'.

Harry had always been terrible at using the floo. Luckily, Hermione wasn't. She stepped gracefully out into an entranceway that she barely recognized- Grimmauld Place was absolutely stunning and majestic. She gave the room a look over, admiring the rich wood detailing and deep greens and blues.

"Oh, darling, you have soot on you."

Bellatrix raised her wand and swished it to the side. A cloud of gray dust rose from Hermione's shoulders and hair, obediently swirling back into the fireplace. Hermione's heart jumped into her throat and she felt frozen to the floor. "There you go, pet. Aunt Walburga is in the dining hall and she sent me to fetch you. I am Bellatrix of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, which you stand in."

There was something very, very wrong with Bellatrix being so personable and polite. Very wrong. Some part of her brain noted that she almost matched Bellatrix- she was in a black and green outfit of similar construction.

"Charmed to meet you. I am Iris."

Bellatrix's gaze sharpened. "Just Iris?", she inquired in a lazy tone that hinted at concealed emotions.

"Legally Iris Evans, but I have reason to suspect that I was not born as such." She left it at that, knowing damn well that the older girl probably knew she was a Parselmouth. It wouldn't do to get into so much speculation without the hostess… or her only backup in this place.

Said backup strode in then, ending the brief conversation. "Welcome to my home," Regulus murmured in what must be a reflex. "Mother is waiting for us at the table. Shall we?" He offered one arm to Bellatrix and the other to Iris. It looked more than a little silly, but both girls allowed a fourteen year old to gallantly lead them to dinner.

As it turned out, she had been invited to dine with Walburga, her sister-in-law Druella, and Druella's daughters Bellatrix and Narcissa, along with Regulus of course. She noted that Sirius was missing, but held her tongue. They had probably known as well as she did that Sirius was a Dumbledore loyalist- it wouldn't do to have the school knowing there was a parseltongue among them. It was an awfully short leap from 'speaks to snakes' to 'is a dark magic practitioner' for most of the population.

Narcissa eyed her strangely, probably wondering if she had misjudged Iris. She kept a poker face, only smiling politely back. Narcissa might regret her previous rudeness, if it turned out that Iris was someone of importance (or could pretend to be someone of importance, rather).

Druella was a singularly unpleasant woman, in Iris' opinion. She kept interjecting with rather vicious gossip and unsolicited criticism. Walburga had a weightier presence- she seemed to choose her words carefully and only used them sparingly. Hermione knew damn well that these four women were evaluating her for weaknesses. Bellatrix was still acting unnervingly normal…

Perhaps her perception of Bellatrix had been a bit skewed. After all, Hermione had only known her as an enemy… and after she had spent a decade in Azkaban. Still, having her attention was an uncomfortable experience.

She suddenly realized something about the Black family- they were all very intense individuals (With the possible exception of the flightier Druella. She seemed like stereotypical trophy wife fare.)

It also didn't escape her attention that Andromeda wasn't here. _Has she already eloped_, Iris wondered_. I suppose they wouldn't call attention to it if she had. I suppose there might already be a little Tonks somewhere_.

That pleasant thought occupied her until the second course of dessert- tiny chocolates and wine.

"Regulus tells me that you are first in your year, and that you completed an independent Transfiguration project last term," Walburga stated more than asked.

She nodded. "Yes, Lady Black."

"Those are both impressive facts," Bellatrix languidly commented. "However, I find myself more interested in Regulus' claim that you speak the serpent tongue. Is that true?"

Ah, there it is.

"I do speak it," she said with forced calm and a slight hint of confidence. "It was a revelation. It was my understanding that only the descendants of the house of Slytherin can speak it."

"Are you of that house?" Narcissa leaned in, pale eyes intent on her.

"I must be," she calmly replied. "Though it does raise the question of how I ended up being raised in a muggle home. I cannot imagine that any of Slytherin's line would intentionally disgrace their child like that, so I doubt my parents are alive."

"Of course," Walburga mused. "Of course. You have my condolences. It must be absolutely terrible."

"I haven't lived with those muggles in years," Iris archly informed. She knew damn well that she didn't want pity in this situation. "When Lily and I received our letters, we moved for magical and mundane emancipation. We have lived alone since we returned from our first year."

Druella frowned. "Two young girls, living alone? That's a disgrace. Did those muggle animals even protest?"

The whole table looked interested in this- even Regulus, who hadn't known she lived alone before now.

"No," she said delicately. "The man wanted us out of his house, and his wife is very infirm. Due to Ministry incompetence, actually, some over-eager Obliviator who caused her to even forget raising children. She woke up and thought she was twenty years old." Hermione took a sip of wine.

"Oh, my," Druella mused, a cruel smile on her lips. "How horrid. Do you think her mind was especially weak? Not that I have much faith in the Ministry workers, of course."

"I haven't the faintest idea," Iris replied, fighting to keep her tone civil. Lily's mother had most certainly not been stupid, but it wouldn't help anything to defend her now.

Narcissa narrowed her eyes at her mother, clearly irritated that she'd gotten off topic. With a wordless wave, she summoned a small, jewel-bright serpent, letting it land gently on the table instead of flop down like Draco had at the dueling club. As such, it wasn't nearly as angry as that snake had been. "Would you mind?" she inquired. "It is such a rare talent, and I would very much like to see it once."

"Certainly," Iris agreed. She refocused. **_Would you mind coming here?_** She asked politely. The serpent rose up and looked at her for a moment, before nodding and gliding towards her. Iris held out her arm and let the snake curl up it. **_You are beautiful_**, she crooned. **_Do you have a name? I am called flower._**

The snake tasted the air. **_I am the first hatchling under the oak tree_**, it replied after a moment of thinking. **_Devourer of the sixth hatchling, one who wanders on the blue river. You may give me one of your names, if you desire_**.

Apparently, snakes don't think of names in the same way that we do, she mused.

"Remarkable," Narcissa mused, eyes bright and gleaming. She was leaning forward, staring at Iris with an almost hungry gaze. "What is she saying?"

Iris gave a polite little laugh and stroked the snake. "Introductions," she said congenially. "She was telling me about herself, and graciously gave me permission to give her a suitable name. She identified herself by her place of birth, order of hatching, and where she lives." She politely left out the part of the introduction that mentioned murdering a sibling. It wouldn't do to give anyone ideas.

**_Little one, this human is also a flower, and those two are named beautiful star. The first adult is… strong protection. The last is elfin vision._**

**_Are two-foot names always so repetitive_**, she asked somewhat curiously.

Iris valiantly kept a poker face. **_No, but two-foot parents often give similar names to young ones from the same hatching_**, she replied. It was true, though not quite the problem. There was only one snake word for flower, and they didn't have names for the different stars.

"I was introducing everyone," she explained. "She introduced herself as the first hatchling from under the oak tree, devourer of the sixth hatchling, the one who wanders on the blue river. Serpents don't think of names in the same way that we do, so I'm afraid that she is laboring under the misconception that Bellatrix and Regulus are both named "Beautiful Star".

Regulus looked horrified at that, but Bellatrix couldn't keep a smirk off of her face. "It suits us both, I believe," she taunted. "Although the last time I was introduced to a serpent, I was called 'Warrior'.

Clearly, she was meant to ask. Hermione gamely took the bait. "You know another who speaks to serpents?" She didn't feign interest, knowing that would have been an expression of vulnerability. If she wasn't interested, Bellatrix would have to carry the conversation.

"Yes," Bellatrix drawled, picking up her wine and swirling it gently. "My dueling Master, actually." She flashed a vicious, prideful smile. "My four year apprenticeship officially ends this summer, actually. But I have so much left to learn from him."

Yepp, Bellatrix was still creepy.

"He sounds like an exceptionally talented individual," Iris said diplomatically. "How marvelous. What is his name, did you say?"

Bellatrix frowned at her. "I didn't say. However, I happened to mention to him that I was attending this dinner. I confess, he was very interested in you." By this point, she was wearing a disarming smile that would have relaxed Hermione if she hadn't known this woman was a viper… and known that she was talking about the Dark Lord Voldemort. "He suggested, in fact, that I extend an invitation to a little party I am hosting soon. It's in celebration of my completed apprenticeship, actually. After meeting you, I can say that I would be delighted if you would grace me with your presence."

There was nothing to say to that but, "It would be my pleasure."

Cold terror gripped her insides, but she outwardly remained calm and participated in idle conversation. She had known, of course, that Voldemort would be interested in another parseltongue. From his perspective, there could be no doubt that she was a relation of some sort, though he would know she wasn't closely related.

But thinking that he would be curious and knowing that she would be meeting him at a party, of all the places, were entirely different things.

He was a very, very dangerous man. A very dangerous man who had a strong incentive to want her dead, even if he didn't know it yet. If she messed up and he suspected her, she would be condemning Viktor and Fleur to death as well. He was a master Legilimens, after all. She was a decent occlumens, but 'decent' wasn't good enough to deal with him.

_One thing at a time_, she reminded herself. _I fooled the Blacks into thinking I'm respectable- that's a pretty big accomplishment. We won't ever need Severus to join the Death Eaters, it looks like I could accidentally infiltrate the inner circle. If I'm around, it'll be much easier to know who he might trust enough to give a horcrux._

The diners rose, and Walburga escorted Druella to the floo, Bellatrix gliding ahead of them. Narcissa, on the other hand, walked closer to Iris. "Were you aware that you have an unhealthy concentration of dark magic emanating from right here?" she lightly touched Iris's chest, near her heart. "I could feel it from the other side of the table. I would suggest reducing that before you suffer ill effects. It would be a shame if you were dead before Bellatrix's party. I would be most disappointed- I am actually arranging the affair, and I do not wish to have to change seating at the last minute. You know how these things are." She smiled rather coldly and followed her family out.

"Well, that was absolutely delightful," Regulus commented as he watched Narcissa walk away. "Really, that dinner was not quite as stressful as I expected. You even got another invitation- your social calendar is really filling up, isn't it?"

"I suppose so." Iris worried at her lip. "What time is it?"

Regulus checked his pocket watch. "Only seven," he informed. "You don't have to leave until nine, I was hoping to show you around."

She already knew the layout of the house, but seeing it again was a novel experience. It was hard to reconcile this opulent manor with the filthy, broken haunt Sirius had inherited. She poked her head into Regulus' room, but they went to the drawing room to talk. Apparently, it would have been inappropriate for the two of them to be together in there. The drawing room was a little creepier than the rest of the house, but she managed to get relatively comfortable. "Where is your mother?", she ventured. To be hones, she was hoping Walburga would stay away.

"She lays down for a rest after dinner," Regulus informed. "Mother has a delicate constitution, and too much excitement wears her out. She approved of you, however. I could tell."

Iris breathed a sigh of relief. "I wasn't sure," she admitted. "I did assume that the lack of cursing was a positive sign, but you know Gryffindors- we need things spelled out."

"Quite," Regulus dryly agreed. He relaxed on his chair in a way that his mother definitely would not approve of. "Mother really wanted things to go well. That's why she foisted the degenerate off onto the Potters." He frowned, looking a little hurt. "You should have seen how excited he was to get away, chirping into the floo about how he was going to go to a Muggle swimming pool and have a sleepover and all sorts of nonsense." He kicked his feet morosely.

Hermione felt more than a little bit awkward. Sirius had probably been delighted to escape his family early, but she didn't want to agree when it clearly wounded his little brother that Sirius would rather be on the other side of the country.

"So, what was Narcissa talking about?"

The sudden conversational shift caught her off guard. "What? Oh, I… I'm not quite sure." Well… She had been very sick after she destroyed the ring horcrux, and that was the only really _dark_ magic she had been exposed to. "I think I know what that's from, although I don't know why it would be so concentrated in one small point…" she trailed off. It had been a very _sudden_ infirmity- more so than she would have expected from normal exposure (not that she knew dark magic well enough to gauge that sort of thing). When the ring had shattered, most of it was so fine as to be dust. Perhaps she had inhaled some, or gotten some in her bloodstream…_ or under my skin_, she realized, remembering all the tiny wounds that had peppered her front.

"Oh my," she said rather faintly, suddenly wondering what having part of an ex-horcrux in your body would do to a person over time. "Oh dear."

Regulus rolled his eyes. "You've done something terribly stupid, haven't you?" He didn't wait for a reply, instead standing up and beckoning for her to follow. "To the library, then."

She stumbled to her feet, a bit baffled. "What, why to the library?" Iris hustled to keep up, turning corners and climbing stairs to the fourth floor.

"Because," he said with endless patience, "I do not happen to have a copy of a text that can tell us how to cleanse you so that you do not die on my person at the moment. If you would like, we could search in the kitchens, or under the billiards table."

"No…. that's quite alright." Had the library always been so far away? Regulus was certainly a speedy little bastard, she decided.

He seemed to know his family library intimately- it only took moments for him to select an acceptable text and they settled on the couch in the library. He flipped through and hmmed thoughtfully at some of the pages, rolling his eyes at others. With an air of triumph, he selected one and set the text down. As she opened her mouth to ask, he clapped his hands- and Kreacher appeared in the room.

"Would you bring us spring water, a cup of red wine, a black ink bottle and a quill?"

Kreacher didn't second-guess the odd request, popping away instantaneously. She blinked. "Thirsty?" she weakly inquired.

Regulus shot her a scathing look. "No, that's what we will be needing for this cleansing ritual." He pointed. "It might be best if you look it over." She picked up the text gingerly, and he continued, "You will see that this won't completely purify you, but it will get the job done. You wouldn't want to be completely purified anyway, you'd lose any aptitude you had for gray or dark magics."

* * *

In the next days, Hermione couldn't help but wonder _what the Hell_ that ring had been made of. Since it had been purified, she had felt an odd resonance with it, and occasionally other things. When leaving the Black home, she had received quite the shock as she walked down the stairs. The line of house-elf heads had pulled at her strangely, and she could swear that one moved slightly.

That terrifying moment had compelled her to see what, if anything else, gave her the same feeling. She made the rather frightening discovery that newer parts of the cemetery felt the same, as did a bent sign post near the road. Brief research confirmed her suspicion that someone had died in a car accident there recently.

_I knew that Riddle's family was dark,_ she grumbled internally, _but I didn't think that the family ring would have some creepy death sense. _She was really hoping that she'd imagined the house elf moving- it would be really terrible to accidentally create inferi by standing too closely. _What a bunch of creeps._

Of course, the theory that it was the ring shard was still less unsettling than that possibility that she had spontaneously developed the ability herself, so she was somewhat grateful for it. If it really bothered her, she could always try to cut or summon the piece out… but that could be difficult. If it'd really been in her body for so many months, it could have wormed its way pretty deep.

It would probably be safest just to make sure it wasn't too tainted.

While she sulked, Remus, Severus and Lily all took their turns showering off the pool water. When it was her turn, she hurried through the now-cool water and focused on getting ready for the night.

She was meeting Alexander and Fleur today- they had planned to practice ward breaking, as there was a really good chance that they would have to break in and steal at least one horcrux. For now, they were planning to take turns setting up wards and then having the other two work together to take them down. Alexander was going first- he'd been researching wards and practicing all week.

Once they'd advanced as much as they could that way, they might try taking down the wards around some of the shops in Knocturn or something that didn't tell wealthy families like the Malfoys that they should update their house's wards. No one would think twice about a shady little store being broken into, especially if nothing of value was taken. Not every warder thought like the three of them did, after all. The more practice, the better off they were.

Somewhat shamefully, she was more preoccupied by the party she was attending tomorrow than with what they were working on. Iris hadn't wanted to tell the other two- they would doubtless worry. However, she couldn't in good conscience risk their lives with her merely adequate Occlumency without at least telling them. As she had predicted, her friends were furious and thought she was an absolute idiot.

She managed to talk them down to thinking that she was merely an impulsive idiot within an hour. Eventually, Fleur, then Alexander came to agree that she stood to gain a lot of valuable information and connections if all went well.

After they were done ward-breaking and then done throwing curses at each other, Alexander went home in disgust and Fleur took her to find suitable robes for the party. She couldn't very well re-wear the ones from last week, Bellatrix would definitely notice. While they were there, Iris purchased a small wardrobe of higher-class, traditional clothing of varying degrees of formality.

Fleur had rolled her eyes at the old-fashioned clothing, but Iris picked out twenty-four dresses, a variety of gloves and hooded cloaks, twelve corsets (some underbust varieties) and two decorative belts.

Of course, that made a trip to the jeweler's necessary- she didn't have to have a lot of it, but she should have some. All that she owned was the matching charm bracelet she'd gotten with Lily, and that definitely wouldn't fly. With a wince, she let the saleswitch pierce her ears. Being respectable was already tiresome, and really making a dent in her basilisk-funded budget. _Good thing I have Severus and Lily working on Wheezes_, she thought._ Gonna need a way to make money soon._

* * *

Being forced to mingle at parties was probably her personal circle of hell, Hermione mused. It was just so incredibly awkward to talk to so many people you don't know and don't care to know.

A moment later, she regretted that thought. She'd gladly take an army of snotty purebloods that she didn't know over the man making his way towards her with a genial, but cool, smile. The crowd parted to let Tom Riddle go where he wanted, and suddenly she was a figure of much more interest than she had been a moment ago. After all, this was his party as much as it was Bellatrix's.

_Oh Merlin, but he is handsome_, her dazed mind managed to get out. _And he's already 47. He looks like a rock star. An evil, sexy rock star. _She forced herself to focus on distrusting the friendly smile he gave her and extended his hand for him to kiss when prompted.

"I do hope you are enjoying yourself," he murmured huskily.

"I am, of course." Inwardly she winced. That was awkward wording, he was going to know he had her off balance. Indeed, when he looked up he seemed to be repressing amusement.

"Bellatrix has been talking about you since that dinner you shared," he began, leading them out of the ballroom of the Black Estate place the event was being held at. (how many houses did these people own, anyway?).

"How kind of her," Iris ventured. "I fear I was not that entertaining of a guest."

"Oh no," he murmured, "I must beg to differ." His eyes flashed with repressed excitement. "She told me something very interesting about you. Would you mind terribly much?" He trailed off, and with a little wave of his wand (the twin to hers, not that he knew that) a yellow serpent curled around his arm, tongue flicking in her direction.

"Not at all," she replied steadily. She switched her attention. **_Greetings, pretty friend. I am called Flower. May I stroke you?_**

His breath caught audibly, and some genuine emotion traced across Riddle's face. He stared in wonder- at her, not the serpent when it replied, **_You may, two-leg. I am the sharp-toothed one from the palace of sand. _**

She had to smile for real at that while she reached out to delicately run a finger down warm, soft scales. "They have the best names," she commented. "No one thinks of themselves in quite the way that serpents do. I once met a serpent about this size who introduced herself as the devourer. I have never met a snake with low self esteem."

Riddle chuckled, the blankly polite expression from earlier on his features again. "That is true," he allowed. "I have often considered finding a serpent who would deign to stay with me as a companion. Alas, I have not yet been found worthy."

Iris had to smile at that, even though she knew any companion he chose would be downright terrifying. "One day," she commented. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast, after all".

His gaze narrowed. "You are rather well-read," he commented, dismissing the serpent without so much as a puff of displaced air or a tilted wrist. "I confess, I find myself very interested, now that I know there is another speaker in the world. What a marvelous coincidence to find you through my lovely student." He paused. "Well, I suppose she is no longer technically my student." He looked almost sheepish.

_Remarkable_, she thought. _I even know better, and I really want to believe his act_. Out loud, she offered the platitude he wanted with a smile. "She is a student as long as there is more for you to teach her."

He waved the semi-compliment away. "Are you perhaps looking for a master," he asked casually, "as I find myself in want of a regular apprentice. Perhaps we could come to an arrangement." He flashed her a very believable, and very charming smile.

She was probably gaping like a fish, but her brain had briefly ceased working. Lord Voldemort was offering to tutor her. Hermione rose up in a frightful tidal wave of emotion, unsure if she wanted to roar 'he was the best student Hogwarts ever had, there is so much I could **_learn_** from him' or 'eep' and hide under the covers. She chose neither. The pause had been too long for her to feign casualness, so instead she opened her mouth and let out, "That would be such an honor, sir. But is it really worth your time to teach a prospective fourth year anything? I would be a terrible step down from Bellatrix."

Riddle raised an eyebrow at that. "The only other known parselmouth in the world, top student of her year, a prodigy by all accounts, and undoubtedly my distant relative in some manner would be a terrible step down? You do yourself a disservice, my lady."

Her brain promptly stopped functioning, so she smiled instead and accepted. She could hyperventilate later, although it was seriously creepy to realize that the Dark Lord Voldemort considered her his family… Likely his only family, as he'd rather disapproved of his real relations. She only half-listened as he explained Bellatrix would still be there, and would likely help him tutor her.

* * *

Lord Voldemort and his most trusted follower and personal apprentice were the only ones left walking the halls of the Black Estate. "My Lord, what did you think of the girl?", Bellatrix asked a little too eagerly.

He smiled indulgently and let the offense pass. She was only eager to please, after all. "You were correct. She is a serpent-speaker," he silkily complimented and watched her puff up. "I only wonder how she is related, but I have no doubt that she is." He paused, considering the truth of his words. He had known who she was without being introduced- he could sense the same feeling of familial magic on her that he had on the two artifacts he had taken from his filthy uncle and that fat woman who'd also had the cup. The ring was long since hidden, but she might, in time, make an excellent guard for his locket. It was only right for it to stay in the family, after all.

Lord Voldemort felt strangely pleased, contented perhaps. He certainly felt no affection for the girl herself, but what she represented was important. Not only did she solidify his position by turning him from a lone parselmouth of low origins to the head of a small family, but she also proved the power of his bloodline.

Even however diluted from the main line of Slytherin's descent she was, the girl- _Iris, was it? He'd have to rename her something more suitable_- was a genius. It had taken very little reconnaissance to confirm the little Black boy's claims that she was a prodigy and the first in her class. She was indeed a worthy child to associate himself with, one that he could mold into his image.

But where, did she come from, he wondered. Doubtless some bastard branch of the family, perhaps spawned from a rejected squib centuries ago. The Gaunts were certainly ignorant and self-important enough to assume that a squib would never be able to carry magical gifts. Purebloods today were still ignorant of recessive inheritance. It was a shame that the information was probably lost... He might like to know just how closely she was related. He was Slytherin's true heir, regardless of how many parselmouths there were, but he had noted that the magical world placed a great deal of stock in consolidation of power within families. After all, he might one day desire to expand the family.


	22. Practice

_Chapter 22_

"You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging from and leaping from their mouths. Silence? No." -Alison McGhee

Aside from the absolutely terrifying fact that she had accidentally become penpals with the Dark Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Black, summer was going really well for Iris. She idly kicked her feet under the table, managing to swipe Alexander a couple times. He gave her a dirty look, and she smiled winningly in response. Fleur was setting up wards for them to test themselves against now.

Neither she nor Alexander was especially talented at waiting games. She was on her fourth hot chocolate, and he was still nursing his first coffee. It was long since cold, which he seemed surprised by. Apparently, he hadn't been to many muggle establishments in past. They didn't throw around temperature charms like candy.

"So," she began, hoping that by the time she'd finished the word she would have a topic. … "Sooo…. Yeah. How about.. that team that you're on? How is that going for you?"

He gave her a baffled look.

"Okay, new topic then." She leaned in grinning mischievously. "Lily has, like, the hugest crush on you."

Suddenly, he looked less bored and more terrified. She frowned. "And what is so wrong with my sister," she demanded crossly. "You look like I just told you Dumbledore wanted to ask you out." She ignored his shudder.

"Iris," he started delicately. "Think about what you are saying. Do you really want me to pursue your little sister?"

She thought about it, remembering that Lily was _actually _fourteen, and that Alexander was a twenty-something year old man in the body of a sixteen year old. Really, the sixteen-year-old thing would have been enough for the idea to be troubling. "No, I don't. Stay the hell away from her you pervert, or I will rip your legs off and beat you with them."

He leaned back and inhaled deeply. "Well, there you go then. Problem resolved."

"Except she still thinks you're cuuu—ute," Iris taunted sing-songingly. "Lily and 'Lexander, sitting in a tree. K, I, S, S, I-" She broke off, coughing and glared at him as fiercely as she could. He grinned back at her, hands moving under the table to put his wand back away.

"I take it back," Iris informed him darkly. "You two will be perfect for each other. You both bully me terribly. I will inform her tonight that her love is requited and that she is to meet you at the Eiffel Tower, where you will picnic at midnight. If you stand her up, I will destroy you."

He just rolled his eyes at her, clearly not putting much faith in the threat. He would later, when the eraser stub she stealthily put in his pocket turned out to be a very recently perfected four destination portkey that took him first to a flower store, a man selling high-quality wine, a pretty café with to-go food, and then the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. Alexander was terrified to leave and risk punishment for standing Lily up, but also frightened to stay and possibly have to go on a date. Luckily for him, Iris hadn't actually told Lily to meet him anywhere.

But that was later in the day.

For now, Iris and Alexander felt their coins heating up and paid off their tabs. They shuffled to the door, both envisioning their new location and apparated away just as the barista looked away from the kids exiting the café.

Fleur greeted them with a beatific grin and a sooty nose. "I have created a masterpiece!" Alexander looked less than enthused at that declaration.

"I think that you enjoy this too much, comrade." He sighed and slumped, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Are we timing this try?"

Fleur shrugged. "That would seem like a good idea to me. Do not rush too much, however. I am not sure as to how late the burn ward is open." Iris shot a look at her, wondering if she should ask.

"Are you trying to assassinate us?"

Fleur snorted. "Non, non." She wiped her hand on her forehead and smirked. "I am just helping you to reach your full potential in your chosen career of 'hoodlum'. There is very little opportunity for merely adequate malefactors."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up blondie." Iris stuck her tongue out at the shorter girl. "You won't be talking so big when I set up wards for you next week. Anything you can do, I can do better."

Alexander groaned. "Oh no, please don't-"

"I can do anything, better than you!"

"No, you can't!"

"Yes, I can".

Alexander interrupted the spontaneous musical, irritated. "For the sake of my sanity, I am just going to start working on this. We are planning to bring pizza to your home and meet your sisters, yes? Perhaps we should start soon, so that we will eat before we grow gray hairs."

"You're a lot closer to that than we are," Fleur retorted.

"But pizza does sound really good." Iris thought wistfully of melted cheese, and decided to focus on the here and now so that she could go home. "Okay, down to business."

Wands out, the two teens cast detection spells, tried to measure the boundaries, and eventually used a pale blue mist to verify where ley lines were. "I think she tied it into this," Iris called. "Do you remember seeing a ward that looked like this in any book?"

Alexander frowned thoughtfully. "No, that's a new one." He shot a dirty look at Fleur, who was grinning like a satisfied cat. "Or… It could merely be a modification of a standard six-by-six Methros guaradar. Look at this joint right here."

"I think you may be right." She grinned. "Which means this is one that I can just overpower. That's my favorite thing to do." Fleur rolled her eyes mockingly. "You are all brute force and very little finesse, my friend!"

Iris shrugged. "I can live with that, if it gets the job done." It did indeed get the job done, but the disappearing ward flickered and singed her fingers. "Bloody hell!" She stuck the fingertips in her mouth, trying to soothe the pain. Fleur didn't even try to disguise her giggles.

"I told you to be careful! And what did you do? Boom! That's what you did."

Iris glared at both her snickering friends, waiting for their humor to die down. And waiting. And waiting some more. With a huff, she turned back to the wards and **_pulled_**, collapsing the whole array. She spun around, crossly ordered her stunned friends to get pepperoni on their way back, and apparated somewhere with people who appreciated her unique talents.

After Lily and Apolline went to sleep, and Petunia was out the door for the night; Iris, Fleur and Alexander attempted to map out exactly what horcruxes they had left to worry about. They had pieced together what little they knew of Riddle's activities after Hogwarts, and thought they knew what objects he had.

Nagini hadn't been made yet, and the ring was destroyed. The diary was definitely already a horcrux, and he definitely had both Hufflepuff's cup and the locket in his possession. They couldn't be sure if he had made them into horcruxes yet, but Iris suspected that the still-fanatical Bellatrix might already have the cup, or that she would be entrusted with it soon. They had some reason to suspect that the locket was still in his possession- Regulus was the one originally entrusted to help Riddle hide that horcrux, so Riddle wouldn't be ready to hide it for years.

"Of course," Fleur glumly summarized, "That still means there is probably one horcrux we don't know about. He wanted seven, probably including the piece in himself as part of that number. We've only accounted for six soul pieces."

"He might not have made it yet?" Alexander offered weakly.

Depressed, the girls went to bed, and Alexander apparated back to his hotel. Unfortunately for him, the portkey Iris dropped in his pocket while hugging him goodnight activated twelve minutes later while he was pulling his pajama pants on.

Safely and comfortably in her be, Iris sighed. There was no getting around it- the slim chance that she would be able to gather information from Voldemort was one they desperately needed. She was definitely going to have to accept the tutoring, and see if she could worm her way into Riddle's good graces. Luckily, he had very little reason to suspect anything from a fourteen-year-old girl raised outside of the tradition of pureblood politics. He would probably think she was an easy target.

If nothing else, it would be high irony for him to personally teach her the skills she would need to defeat his servants.

* * *

_"Everyday confirms my opinion of the superiority of a vicious life- and if virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it" -Lord Byron _

Learning the skills she would need to defeat death eaters sucked. Hermione dropped to a low crouch and spun to the left, away from Bellatrix's hex. That woman just didn't get tired, or bored.

It was a little depressing to realize that she was thoroughly outclassed by someone who was hardly older than her real mental age. It was one thing to be humiliated by Riddle himself, or Dumbledore, but her ego didn't want to take this particular blow.

As terrifying as Bellatrix had been in the second war, she was actually worse now. It was downright intimidating to remember that the Valkyrie woman who had routinely fought three Order members at a time had been suffering from a severe drop in skill after more than a decade's incarceration in Azkaban. She was practically Dark Lord material herself- no small wonder that Lord Voldemort had made her his personal apprentice and his most trusted lieutenant.

Though he was meant to be her tutor, Riddle hadn't dueled her at all yet. He was watching the two young women fight, doubtlessly racking up a silent critique.

She attempted to toss a blue flame hex at Bellatrix, but had to change it into a shield to deflect a spray of marble shards. The resulting molten mess dropped to the floor just as Bellatrix's next curse soared over. Iris had to side step to avoid it, and barely managed to shield against the next projectile.

Dodging was really wearing her out, and she couldn't hope to compete with the sheer volume of attacks Bellatrix was sending. Determined to make a good showing without showing off any spells she shouldn't know (it would really suck to give away any small advantage she had for future fights), Iris changed tactics.

She couldn't fight Bellatrix that way- attempting to return hex for hex wasn't working. Bellatrix was just too fast. By the time Iris had avoided or cancelled one attack, the older girl was bearing down with two minor curses. It was rather like being hit by a train- she was a nearly unstoppable force. However, the older girl was also very predictable. She could take advantage of that predictability… if she had a way to not get hit for upwards of a second.

While her wand hand brought up a standard (though over-powered) shield, Iris focused percussive force wandlessly. It was much easier to use that tactic with a physical movement than without. Instead of using her other hand and alerting Bellatrix, she brought her right leg forward into a battement tendu (her years of ballet were finally useful!)

It was crude, but the invisible force knocked into Bellatrix's shins and brought the girl to the ground face-first. She practically howled with rage. Riddle's eyes narrowed, clearly interested in the development.

It took less than two seconds for the Black for regain her feet, but that was all the time Iris needed to turn the tables with a two-headed whip of conjured water in the shape of a poisonous-looking serpent.

She harassed the older girl from two angles at once, turning her attention to the snake-headed whip coming from Bellatrix's left. The whip was mostly harmless, but it was alarming enough to serve to distract Bellatrix from the follow-up disorientation hex that would hopefully nullify her advantage in speed by making her moss her target. The thick slab of slimy mud that Iris slammed into Bellatrix's legs was just icing on the cake.

A quick blast of air hardened it, but Bellatrix rotated her torso to aim a stinging hex at Iris.

Even though Bellatrix couldn't step anywhere, and her hexes were coming in a few inches off of where she'd aimed, Iris quickly lost her advantage. Bellatrix blasted Iris off of her feet, sending her flying into the stone wall. Iris rolled and sent a harsh cutting curse that grazed Bellatrix's thigh, but that was the last hit she achieved.

She woke up to Riddle's wand in her face, and abruptly flipped away on the floor, pushing herself up to her hands and then to a standing position, warily keeping his wand in her vision.

He laughed. "Bella, dear talented Bella," he began. "Would you have ever imagined that there existed a third-year capable of landing a curse upon you?"

The older girl flushed a little and ducked her head, before replying, "You could have won against me as a second year, my Lord." She flashed him a cheeky grin. "But other than that, I could not have expected to come so close. For the sake of my dignity, may we call her a fourth year instead, although she has yet to start that year?"

Iris tried not to choke. _Oh god, how bizarre. They make jokes._

Riddle smiled dangerously. "And did you see her reflexes when she woke up with a wand pointed at her?" Mockingly, he added, "I was lucky to escape with my life. But enough of that. I would like very much for you to be my student. Bellatrix. How would you describe Iris's strengths and weaknesses as a duelist?"

"She didn't stick with a losing tactic," Bellatrix replied immediately. After some thought, she continued "She compensated for a smaller magical core in a fight against a mature opponent by creatively using lesser jinxes to reserve energy. Iris was not nearly aggressive enough, however. She was far too slow to block, and so she had to dodge. That meant that she lost opportunities to cast her own hexes."

Then she scowled. "And she capitalized on my instinctive reaction to fangs coming at my face in order to distract and immobilize me."

"Quite," Riddle responded dryly. His dark green eyes tore a hole right through Iris' being, and she fought down a shiver. "Bella, you also made an error in judgment."

Her crestfallen expression was almost comical.

"You chide Iris for her lack of aggression, but your single-minded mode of attack was perhaps… inappropriate for a casual duel, meant to assess her abilities. You did not analyze your opponent, instead, you sought to destroy her." He leveled a blank stare at her. "Usually, that method will serve you well. But you did not consider your tactics. You were predictable."

"Nonetheless…" Riddle turned back to Iris. "You would be dead in minutes if you were to duel Bellatrix seriously. You are slow, and your repertoire is small, though creative. I would suggest that you develop some original spells. Bella dear had no problem at all predicting how to neutralize your attacks." He offered a chilling smile to the two of them. "Your styles are quite complementary, in fact. If you were up to Bella's caliber, you would be nigh-unbeatable."

"Bella, could I ask you to help Iris improve her casting speed several times weekly? I will supervise, naturally."

"Of course, Master". Bellatrix bowed deeply, looking at him from under her lashes.

"I will personally help you refine your wandless magic. You seem to have an unrefined aptitude for that art." Iris winced, remembering how crude her attempt had been. His words were normal, but his tone seemed a bit mocking. "Wandless magic is always somewhat crude, and from an ideological standpoint I am afraid I rather dislike it. Our wands are the symbol of our superiority- over Muggles, goblins, and other such beasts." He stroked his lovingly. "Nonetheless, there exists a possibility that you might one day be without your wand."

"Thank you for that assessment." Iris worried at her lip. "I would be honored to learn from you." She offered a shallow bow, neck stiff. "How am I to refer to you?"

He stepped close, steps ringing on the cold marble. His smile was dangerously thin. "I am to be your dueling master, am I not? Refer to me as such, or simply as Master."

"Thank you, dueling Master." She turned to Bellatrix. "And thank you as well. I am honored to learn from you."

As much as it galled her to call anyone 'Master", her etiquette books had indicated that it was actually the traditional title for an expert duelist. Refusing would have been utterly stupid.

"Leave us, Bella."

The older girl didn't blink twice at the curt dismissal. Instead, she bowed her head and strode out of the ballroom, letting the French doors swing behind her.

Iris' heartbeat picked up. It was a sad state of affairs to realize that Bellatrix Black was her safety blanket, making her feel less nervous to be in the same room as the Dark Lord. He beckoned silently, and she obediently followed him out the hall and to a study with a crackling fireplace.

He lightly clapped his hands and ordered the house elf that appeared to bring tea for her. She stood frozen while he languidly poured himself a flute of wine and then gracefully settled into a tall leather chair. Riddle didn't bother to look at her. "Please, sit." His long, thin hands gestured towards a shorter red chair.

She settled into it without a word, accepting the cup of piping hot tea the anonymous house elf pushed into her hands a moment later.

Only then did his expression ease from blankness into the crocodile smile she had begun to recognize as patently false. "I was hoping to have a conversation about what we hope to achieve from this partnership." His eyes bored into her. "I realize that I have already accepted you as my student, but I require a certain amount of compatibility and flexibility of thinking from my apprentices."

"I see, dueling master." Iris sipped from her tea, hoping her tone was deferential enough. She didn't really know groveling etiquette well.

"You plan to learn to duel from me. I will teach you things your professors at Hogwarts can scarcely imagine. They are limited, of course… Limited by their inept pupils, by their time, and of course, by their own arbitrary ideals about what it is to be a practitioner of magics."

He leaned in, eyes intently boring into what felt like her soul. She genuinely hoped he couldn't read her as well as it seemed he could.

"You speak of power, sir?"

A smile curled dangerously around the edges of his lips. "Yes, I speak of power. Real power. The meanest wizard is far above any mere muggle, of course, but that is such an unambitious way to measure oneself. Magic, as it is taught at Hogwarts, is watered down intolerably, until it is palatable for unprepared, undeserving mudbloods."

Voldemort relaxed, looking exactly as threatening as he did when he was pointing a wand at her. "Once, the old traditions were taught at Hogwarts, as they are in other places in the world. I traveled to many countries after I graduated to finish my education. But Britain's children deserve better." He glanced back at her to gauge her reaction. So far, she couldn't really disagree.

"Knowledge is power," she murmured. "If they are intentionally denying us knowledge, they are handicapping their own citizenry. Disgraceful. Why would anyone cater to the sensibilities of muggleborns, the outsiders?"

Voldemort sounded strangely sad when he replied, "I wish that I knew." His tone became persuasive, inspirational even when he continued. "But I will teach you real magic, old magic. It will perhaps take years- I spent four years with Bellatrix, and she had the benefit of a full education and parents who adhere to some of the old ways."

That genuinely surprised Iris. "Only some of the old ways? I had thought that the Blacks were very traditional."

The man laughed mockingly for a moment, and then stood. He crossed the room to pull a leather-bound book off a shelf, stroking its spine adoringly. "Oh no, my dear. They are merely reflecting part of their heritage. The influence of muggles goes far back. Back to when Hogwarts was founded, and to when their barbaric religion began to fester. Muggles killed wizards and witches on the say-so of their petty ideals, and their spawn brought the infestation into our own homes."

His tone turned wistful. "The old gods are dead, or so they would have us believe. It is now a shameful thing, to make sacrifices under a full moon." He turned to her, passion emanating from his person. "Once, wizards had true power. We were as gods ourselves with the influence of pagan ritual."

She found herself holding her breath, wanting to know more. When he stopped speaking and turned to regard her silently, Iris realized she was practically leaning out of her chair. Face flushed, she regarded him in silence. Had the emergence of Christianity really had such an effect on the way that wizards and witches regarded and used magic? She found herself burning to know, even as he dismissed her and she followed the house elf to the front door.

* * *

The summer was turning out to be exhausting. Iris moaned pitifully, attempting to rub the soreness out of her calves. She had really been pushing herself on her morning runs in an attempt to improve her cardio stamina. Keeping up with Bellatrix was pure hell.

It was even harder than it should have been, because Iris was hiding her meetings through use of her time-turner. There was no chance that her sisters would have failed to notice her being absent twice a week. Lily might have accepted the true answer that she was being tutored, but she would also want to know who her tutor was. That was a conversation to avoid.

She was constantly tired and irritable. Humans weren't meant to have thirty-hour long days. There were only so many naps a fourteen year-old could take before their concerned older sister took them to the doctor, as she discovered.

All she could do was sneak naps where she could, and gradually fall further and further behind on sleep and share the misery.

Lily absolutely hated her babysitting job by now, but she'd agreed to do it for the entire summer and was determined to suffer through until the end.

Only Severus appeared to be relatively content- he was practically living with the girls, developing a bit of a tan, and currently experimenting with what Iris knew would eventually be the Wolfsbane potion. If he had known about Remus and hated him as he had in the first timeline, it would have been impossible. However, since his two best friends had stated supportive opinions, and he didn't have a personal grudge, Severus was pretty cool about the whole thing. It only took a few pointed questions and suggestions to get him brain storming.

Between that brewing development and Iris's casual poisoning of another prominent anti-lycanthropic rights activist, there would hopefully be less reason for werewolves to join the dark lord in great numbers in the coming conflict.

The dark lord had actually staged an attack with the aid of a clan of giants. It had shocked the wizarding world to the core- there hadn't been a major threat on the continent in a very long time. The giants were all killed, but seven aurors were counted among the casualties. Minister Bagnold had made public statements indicating that she would be revamping training and asking for recruits to sign up. They did, in a wave of optimistic patriotism.

Doubtless, after that group of rushed and under-trained recruits was killed too the rest of the citizenry would be too frightened to enlist. That was probably the entire reason that the giants had focused their attacks on the aurors and not merely on inflicting as much damage to the locals as possible.

If Riddle had merely meant to drum up fear, he would have set the giants on helpless targets. Of course, that would have enraged the populace, and painted him as a coward. By engaging the law enforcement, Riddle took out the backbone of talented fighters, convinced the general populace that this was not their fight, and impressed anyone who had sympathetic political leanings. After all, it seemed a direct and more honorable way to oppose the (admittedly corrupt and inept) Ministry.

Of course, all hell would break loose once it became obvious that Voldemort wouldn't always play by those rules. The citizens who assumed aurors would protect them would blame the aurors and ministry for failing, not themselves or their assailants. That would in turn make the ministry desperate and encourage dissent within, especially within undertrained and frightened young aurors.

It was positively bizarre to meet with Bellatrix and the dark lord himself the next day, still acting under the pretense that she didn't know who he really was. Bellatrix had brought up the news, and both her tutors seemed mildly surprised by her assessment of what would happen to morale and the new aurors. _Foreknowledge is a wonderful substitute for talent in strategic thinking_, Iris thought wryly.

After the initial duel with Bellatrix, which was how they began every day that they met, Bella casually brought the subject up.

"We live in exciting times, do we not?"

"What do you mean?" Iris frowned, wishing she knew where this was going. It was an irritatingly vague way to begin a conversation. Riddle had recently left the room for some meeting, leaving the older girl to walk Iris through silent casting techniques.

"I was referring to all the commotion involving those dreadful muggles going missing, and the emergence of a dark lord. It is all so very exciting." Bella was a touch too vicious to pull off casual, Iris wryly noted.

"It is. More interesting is the question of where the muggles are going, and why on earth a dark lord would want them. The obvious answer is that he is making a statement, of course, but that appears to be a secondary objective."

Bella's eyes narrowed. "What on earth do you mean? Surely the act is its own reward."

Iris chose her words carefully. "Perhaps to let off some steam, or put a particularly insolent animal in its place, that is true. However, no individual muggle is a threat to our culture. The spread of their culture, through mudbloods and halfbloods is.

If his true objective was simply the extermination of useless mundanes, he would be much more …efficient. The papers have reported what, two hundred missing? That is barely a drop in an ocean of cockroaches. On the other hand, it is a decent beginning for a militia of inferi, or sacrifices for certain rituals, or even as food for allied giants and such. If we knew what was happening to the missing muggles, I wager it would be much more exciting than simply squashing pests."

Bella giggled madly, waving her hand as if begging Iris to go on.

She effortlessly forced a smile. "I do hope we see what comes of this soon. The Ministry is barely keeping the muggles and mudbloods under control now. If an army of inferi wanders through London, their resources will be strained to the point of bursting at the seams. The Ministry only has power as long as the people believe it can protect them. I personally have no love lost for the Ministry of Magic, as it currently exists. It would be interesting to see how Lord Voldemort envisions the world."

Bellatrix laughed, delighted. "You have the most wonderful imagination, sweetheart. I rather like imagining those filthy muggles are being put to some great use for once.

As casualties piled up and muggles went missing in droves, their sessions often turned to discussions of political ideology. Iris wasn't stupid- she knew that she was being subtly tested. Of course, she also knew the answers they were looking for- power is its own reward, magic is might, and so on and so forth. Soon, she actually had homework of a sort, beyond improving her physical condition. Riddle 'recommended' certain texts available at Flourish and Blott's, and leant her others from his personal library. Some were curses, but most were history and cultural knowledge. Almost all were politically charged.

_Riddle could be leading up to the big reveal that he is the dark lord everyone is so enamored with or terrified of_, Iris mused. _He's gauging my receptiveness by gradually asking more incriminating questions._

It was have been foolhardy in the extreme for her to declare her undying loyalty to a dark lord she supposedly hadn't met yet, and she was carefully displaying a slow progression of negative opinion on Muggles and Muggleborns.

It wasn't so difficult to claim she disliked muggles- Riddle and Bellatrix both knew that Mr. Evans had wanted nothing to do with the twins when they got their Hogwarts letters.

The main way she was indicating interest in and admiration of the mysterious dark lord, however, was the way that she analyzed his tactics and thought patterns. She knew that Riddle might find her superb analysis of his thoughts to be disturbing, but he would definitely take it as confirmation that she thought similarly.

Riddle's greatest flaw had always been his inability to relate to other people- he simply couldn't comprehend that other people thought in different ways (or, at least, he was incapable of adjusting his thought patterns to see through their perspectives). He wouldn't think she was playing at advocating for the devil when it made more sense to him that she must simply be exhibiting more similarities, like their green eyes and snake language.

She couldn't help but notice that she had been taken under his protection, and in more than the obvious way that he was teaching her to fight. Aside from the Black family, no one seemed to really know about her. Other than the people she had encountered and exchanged pleasantries with at Bellatrix's party, no one seemed aware she was of any importance.

Riddle was probably gauging her usefulness and keeping her in reserve until she was trained enough to be an effective weapon and fit in socially with the pureblood elite. Until then, it was in his interests for her to be obscure. If no one knew she was important, no one would judge him through association to whatever blunders she might make.

Alternately, he might have considered that she still had years of schooling left and that she was under Dumbledore's control. It was theoretically possible that she might fall under his sway. She knew that wasn't going to happen, of course- she had her own agenda. But Riddle didn't yet know her well enough to be sure she would be loyal.

She wasn't about to complain that Walburga and the other Blacks had obviously been told to leave her alone and not talk about her. It was in her best interests to stay under the radar as well- it would be hideously unfortunate if Dumbledore or someone else were to decide that she was a threat, or had gone dark.

* * *

As soon as she got her yearly cheque from her father for school supplies, Iris dragged her sister to Diagon Alley. She had been burning to learn more about the pagan traditions of European witchcraft, strangely passionate to learn more about her culture's history. If nothing else, it would present an interesting look into Voldemort's psyche.

However strange it was to believe a dark lord, Hermione really did believe there was something she didn't understand, something powerful about the pagan traditions Voldemort espoused. After all, the ritual Regulus had found to rid her of excess corruption had been one of those old magics (Riddle wasn't as right as he thought he was that the Blacks had converted). She had read quite a few books, but she couldn't remember anything that would have helped her in more mainstream magical practice.

Riddle had made the claim that part of the stigma around so-called dark magic was that it had roots in the ancient pagan traditions that the wizarding world had abandoned in order to assimilate. It was as good an explanation for any as to why some innocuous color-change spells, or pranking spells no harsher than the ones she saw in the halls every day were somehow considered taboo.

The other food for thought he had given her was in regards to his suggestion that she develop some unique spells. She had taken Arithmancy, of course, so she understood the theory behind spell creation. She had just never considered herself to be particularly innovative.

Innovative or not, she was feeling inspired by Riddle's suggestions that she attempt to make mathematical correlations between Latin ratios and those for Parseltongue- without knowing what she was saying, it would be nigh-impossible to predict or treat spell damage.

He was encouraging saying this because he liked the conceit of having an arsenal of 'family' spells, and knew that she would end up showing them to him. He was brilliant, and had made many original spells himself, but there was no reason for him not to benefit from any work that she did.

Still, the idea lingered.

School shopping takes less time every year, Hermione noted as the Evans girls hurried home. Daylight was fading, and the pool had opened for the day two hours earlier.

At home, Lily outright groaned when she saw that Remus had brought tag-a-longs. "Are you kidding me?" she demanded crossly. "You brought Potter along for our last pool day?"

Said boy was looking around their apartment curiously, noting the still photos of Petunia and the twins at the zoo. Lily's cat wandered up to the pileup of boys outside their fireplace, waving between their legs.

Remus flushed. "I couldn't leave them behind," he protested weakly. "I didn't expect them to come over, but it was too late to cancel on you guys. I had to bring them."

While they argued, Sirius reached down to pet the kitty and got bit for his troubles. "Bloody hell!"

Petunia poked her head around the corner and fixed the boys with a severe stare. "Who said that?"

Severus ratted Sirius out instantly, receiving a dirty look for his trouble.

"I was surprised, Ms. Evans," he offered. "I went to pet the cat and got a handful of teeth."

Lily snickered.

The pool didn't go much more smoothly- James and Sirius were absolutely baffled by the indecent way Muggles dressed at the pool. James insisted on wearing a t-shirt, but Sirius was delighted by the opportunity to engage in near nudity. He taunted James for wearing one of Petunia's old shirts- he couldn't fit in any of the twins' clothing. None of the boys could anymore, actually. Even Severus had hit his growth spurt at some point.

Lily and James bickered like fishwives all afternoon. Severus settled for interjecting on Lily's behalf, while Remus somewhat anxiously attempted to mediate.

Sirius and Iris just chilled, however. Once they grew tired of going down the waterslide, they stretched out on towels and soaked up the sun.

"This was a pretty good summer," Sirius ventured. He flashed a grin at her, but Iris was facing down and didn't see it. (the sun bothered her eyes.) "I mean, I spent almost all of it at the Potters' house."

Iris frowned imperceptibly. "What about your family?" She raised her head to look at him. "Don't you think your little brother misses you?"

Sirius barked a laugh at that. "Right, very funny. Regulus is mommy's little boy, not my brother. James is my brother." His expression turned bitter. "Besides, I hear he had some little friend over. My family must have wanted to impress him- they kicked me out post-haste."

Iris winced. He was talking about her, and didn't know it. How awkward. And his rejection of Regulus was harsh- he was under a lot of stress to live up to the ideals of the house of Black. Regulus did love his brother- he just resented him for leaving Regulus alone to live up to Walburga's standards. He would have been very hurt if he'd heard Sirius outright reject him as a brother.

Apparently, she was silent for too long, because he picked up the conversation again.

"It's a good thing, mind. It means that they've given up on me. If they thought they could get me back into the fold, they'd make me stay around."

_Actually_, Iris thought, _they won't give up on you until your seventh year. They just didn't want you running to Dumbledore about the snake in your midst. _


End file.
